The clown has a bloody breakfast – “It – Welcome to Derry” gives Stephen King fans a horror autumn

The town sign, with the greeting "Welcome to Derry," depicts a bearded, white lumberjack. His name is Paul Bunyan, who is said to have been born in the town of Bangor in Stephen King's home state of Maine (according to legend, the giant baby needed five storks to arrive), and is said to have created the lakes of Minnesota with his footsteps.

King relocated Bangor's real 9-meter Bunyan statue to his (fictional) city of Derry, where it is currently being assembled in 1962, the year the new HBO series "It: Welcome to Derry" is set. This already gives the city a pretty gruesome monster.

But there is another one here, every 27 years ready to murder, and in the series "It - Welcome to Derry" (from October 27th on Wow/Sky) the unfortunate 12-year-old Matty Clements (Miles Ekhardt) is the first to find out about it one evening while hitchhiking, after being thrown out of the cinema for watching illegally.

The monster "It" is the Rachmaninoff of the keyboard of fears. "It" has razor-sharp teeth, "It" has thousands of faces, "It" occasionally slips into the Bunyan figure in King's book, but "It" most often appears in the form of the clown Pennywise. Every 27 years, an unusually large number of children mysteriously disappear from the city.

Pennywise is arguably Stephen King's most popular creation, a fascinatingly ambiguous figure. The clown type is, on the one hand, the circus comedian who makes children laugh. At the same time, the fear of clowns' masquerades is so widespread that there's even a specific term for it: coulrophobia. According to a study by the University of South Wales titled "Fear of Clowns" (2023), five percent of people suffer from this fear, about the same as those with a fear of heights.

It takes a while before Pennywise attacks in his favorite costume. But there's plenty of horror before that, and the series creators treat some of the young heroes as crudely and bloodily as Hitchcock did with his pseudo-protagonist Marion Crane in "Psycho" (1960).

The half-orphan Lilly (Claire Stack) hears Matty's voice coming from the drain and is later brutally confronted with her father's trauma. How "It" then torments Ronnie, Rich, and Will, the other children who are gradually becoming a team, with their fears remains a spoiler. Suffice it to say: it's worth it.

Here, the real-life horror of the USA is also palpable: racism, which, like Pennywise, never really went away, and is becoming more pronounced in the Trump era. Black people moving into Derry are subjected to "looks" from their white neighbors. The "Negro" is blamed for feelings of decline, and the Black projectionist Hank is blamed for Matty's disappearance.

And when Black Southern civil rights activist Charlotte Hanlon (Taylour Paige) tries to get Hank out of Derry prison, she gets a nasty police glimpse into the "white supremacy" that also prevails in the northern United States. A lot goes on short of lynching.

However, she responds to the cop's misogyny and racial hatred with the series' most beautiful monologue: "My name isn't Lady, it's Charlotte Hanlon. That may not mean anything to you, but it will when you see the terrifying shit I can do with the telephone. The fact is, if you don't let me see Hank Rogan right now, Martin Luther King, JFK, RFK, and a whole lot of other FKs will be breathing down your neck by tomorrow morning, and a busload of freedom fighters will be singing 'We shall overcome' in your streets."

Don't be confused: The book and the films/series differ in terms of the setting: In Stephen King's novel, the children fight Pennywise for the first time in 1957/58 and enter the second round in 1984/85. In Andy Muschietti's two "It" films (2017/19), the years were 1989 and 2016. Therefore, Muschietti's prequel series, following the monster's changed rhythm, is set in 1962—four years after King's original story—and features different characters. Although some family names sound familiar.

Hanlon, for example. His father, Leroy, a highly decorated soldier in the Korean War, is given a special assignment. Politicians and the military have heard First Nations legends of an incredibly powerful presence in the area, which, they believe, could end the Cold War if used as a weapon. Hanlon is supposed to capture this something. Did his superiors eat a clown for breakfast?

This expansion of Pennywise's sphere of influence is a shame. While Pennywise, who is also a symbolic figure of unresolved pasts, was barely perceptible in the adult novel, a nebulous aggression amplifier, this time the monster, once again played by Bill Skarsgård, plays tag with people of all ages.

The series plans to jump back to previous Pennywise killer cycles in its next seasons. The second will take you to 1935, followed by 1908. A potentially endless series.

After all, according to King and the First Nations of the series, It came to Earth eons before the dawn of humanity - from "the darkest corner of the night sky."

"It: Welcome to Derry," series, first season, eight episodes, story development: Andy and Barbara Muschietti, Jason Fuchs, based on the novel "It" by Stephen King; showrunner: Jason Fuchs, Brad Caleb Kane, with Bill Skarsgård, Taylour Paige, Claire Stack, Amanda Christine, Blake Cameron James, Jovan Adepo, Chris Chalk, James Remar, Arian S. Cartaya, Matilda Lawler, Madeleine Stowe, Kimberly Guerrero, BJ Harrison, Stephen Rider, Peter Outerbridge (from October 27 on Wow & Sky Atlantic)