What to watch while The Walking Dead is on hiatus: The Stand

Stephen King’s The Stand is a great show to watch while The Walking Dead is on hiatus

The Captain Trips virus in Stephen King’s The Stand isn’t the same as the virus that turns dead people into walkers on The Walking Dead, but it might be even worse given that it wipes out 99.4% of the human population without batting an eye. If you’re looking for a dark post-apocalyptic world to escape to in the waning days of 2020, The Stand on CBS All Access might be the perfect choice.

The story begins with stories coming out of Arnett, Texas, where the CDC has cut an entire town off from the world and no one understands why. There’s a weird disease going around that looks like a super flu, nicknamed “Captain Trips” by the masses, and eventually it starts taking people out like crazy.

Instead of seeing the dead come to life, the characters in The Stand are surrounded by the dead, forced to bury loved ones in their backyards when the outbreak first begins because no one is coming for them.

The people who are left start gravitating toward two groups that can be described as the good side, under the guidance of the mysterious Mother Abigail (Whoopi Goldberg), and the not so good side, led by the charismatic Randall Flagg (Alexander Skarsgard).

Unlike The Walking Dead, there is no fight against the undead in The Stand. This is a story of good versus evil battling it out to regain control of a world that has spiraled into oblivion, and only the immune will survive.

King’s story, first published in 1978, is a massive tome that pushes 900 pages. It was first brought to life on television in 1994 on ABC, where it was met with mixed reactions from fans and casual viewers. Since the eight-hour miniseries aired on network TV, it had to be watered down a great deal and many fans thought that it lost a lot of the edginess that made it a quintessential King story. The CBS All Access version doesn’t pull any punches thus far, and it already has people buzzing.

If you’re looking for something that dabbles in the apocalypse but also mirrors a lot of what’s happening in 2020, then you might want to take a look at The Stand while The Walking Dead is on winter break.

The Stand is available to stream now on CBS All Access.