Are you watching Stephen King’s Under the Dome?

I’m sure you are one of the 10 million plus viewers watching Stephen King’s Under the Dome TV adaptation, right? If you aren’t that you need to correct that immediately. This is what THR shared:

Fast National returns give the series premiere a 3.2 rating with adults 18-49 — 13.1 million viewers. That ties it with The Following for second-highest-rated drama premiere of the 2012-13 season (both falling shy of NBC’s Revolution) and gives it the biggest audience for a drama launch in the last year. It also marks CBS’ most watched summer debut since 2000 (Big Brother) and its highest rated since 2005 (Fire Me Please).

Under the Dome is based on the Stephen King novel based off the same name. Here is the book’s description:

On an entirely normal, beautiful fall day in Chester’s Mill, Maine, the town is inexplicably and suddenly sealed off from the rest of the world by an invisible force field. Planes crash into it and fall from the sky in flaming wreckage, a gardener’s hand is severed as “the dome” comes down on it, people running errands in the neighboring town are divided from their families, and cars explode on impact. No one can fathom what this barrier is, where it came from, and when — or if — it will go away.
Dale Barbara, Iraq vet and now a short-order cook, finds himself teamed with a few intrepid citizens — town newspaper owner Julia Shumway, a physician’s assistant at the hospital, a select-woman, and three brave kids. Against them stands Big Jim Rennie, a politician who will stop at nothing — even murder — to hold the reins of power, and his son, who is keeping a horrible secret in a dark pantry. But their main adversary is the Dome itself. Because time isn’t just short. It’s running out.

I personally have not read this novel by Stephen King and once I knew it was to become a TV show, I won’t read the book. I learned the hard way with The Vampire Diaries and True Blood, that you should not read the books while you watch the show at the same time. You compare everything to the book and end up getting upset because it usually doesn’t match the book. So I googled information about Under the Dome to get an idea of what the novel was about and read some book reviews. Needless to say I became excited to start watching the show. There have been 5 episodes now and every week that past, I get more and more obsessed with the show. It just keeps getting intense and nothing about it is predictable.

I read a post that IGN shared about “5 Things You Need To Know” about Under the Dome. IGN had the opportunity to attend an early screening of the debut episode recently at an event where co-executive producers Neal Baer (E.R.) and Brian K. Vaughan (Lost) were on hand to talk about the show. So this is what they mentioned:

• This Is Not A Miniseries
• It’s One Day At A Time In Chester’s Mill
• People Will Die, Mysteries Will Be Solved
• The Effects Will Keep On Coming
• The End May Not Be The End

“When I came up with this idea, I envisioned a town potentially being trapped for years,” King told the team, “and that’s something that you guys could get to do, that I didn’t.” Though they hope to run for more that one season, the co-executive producers do like what Vaughn refers to as the “all killer and no filler” 13-episode model, versus the more “traditional” network model of 20 or more episodes a season.

“The characters are complicated,” Baer says. “The people you think are bad, may not be so bad, and the ones you think are good, may not be so good. That’s really what Stephen King has always done so well, and we’ve really embraced that, too. So, don’t believe everything you see.”

“It’s not post-apocalyptic.” Vaughan says. “This is the first day after this life-altering tragedy, and we really didn’t want to leave these people, for a moment. We want to see each step, gradually, of how this society can change, as Chester’s Mill is cut off from the rest of the United States.”

“We pitched Stephen a far-out, big-swing idea for this to go several years, a different ending, and he was really excited by it, ” Vaughan said. The author was said to have exclaimed, “I wish I thought of that. That’s killer!” Ultimately, the choice was left up to the producers. “He said, ‘To quote Elvis, “It’s your baby, rock it.” Vaughan added.

“Steven Spielberg sees the best in humanity and Stephen King is always seeing the worst,” Vaughan said. “But there are similarities: they’re both really aggressive humanists who love people so much; and [love] throwing them in extraordinary situations and seeing what happens.”

Did all that get you interested yet? Under the Dome airs on CBS’ Monday’s at 10pm EST/9pm CST. A familiar face to twilight fans will be Rachelle LaFevre (Victoria from Twilight Saga: New Moon) she plays Julia Shumway: An investigative reporter who takes an interest in Barbie and her husband goes missing after the dome appears. Barbie is played by Mike Vogel known for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, Grind, Poseidon, Blue Valentine, The Help and Cloverfield. Then you have newcomer Alexander Koch who plays Junior Rennie, wait till you see what his character is all about. Cray Cray!