A ‘Golden’ Series From Stephen King

Stand by Stephen King. Although hardly the sentimental treatise on life after 70 suggested by its title, “Golden Years” is evidence anew that King needn’t be terrifying to be good.

Very, very good, in fact.

That’s exactly what this suspenseful, shadowy CBS summer series promises to be, based on its two-hour premiere airing at 9 tonight on Channels 2 and 8. It returns at 10 p.m. Thursday, the regular time slot for the duration of its seven-episode run.

It remains to be seen whether “Golden Years” will get the ratings to gain life beyond the present CBS commitment. Yet this refreshing swig of King seems just the thing to break the annual July-August programming drought.

Best known for the horror in his blockbuster novels, King on the screen is rarely as terrifying as King on the printed page, whether his work is being adapted for theatrical movies or TV. In the premiere of “Golden Years,” though, his interest is much less the macabre than the mystery.

The first story that King has written specifically for TV, “Golden Years” opens at a secret government lab in upstate New York, where 70-year-old janitor Harlan Williams (Keith Szarabajka) is being fired because he failed an eye exam.

However, Harlan’s immediate flash of anger over his job plight is swiftly blown away by something much larger: an explosion in the lab that contaminates him and ignites a cover-up.

In addition to the deranged chief scientist whose behavior caused the accident, Dr. Todhunter (Bill Raymond), cover-up conspirators appear to include the general (Ed Lauter) who’s in charge of the experimental lab, and R.D. Call (Jude Andrews), a ruthless operative of a government agency known as “The Shop.”

Besides his wife, Gina (Frances Sternhagen), Harlan’s only ally appears to be the lab’s feisty security chief, Terry Spann (Felicity Huffman), who suspects something is amiss but can’t quite figure out what it is. She threatens to “go public” should the government put Todhunter “back in business.”

“Golden Years” puts King in the business of superior TV. These eclectic first two hours include a sweet love story showing Harlan and Gina as sexually active, and darts of wry wit: “Where do they find these lunatics?” someone asks the general about Todhunter. “I think he’s from Stanford,” the general replies.

Above all, though, King hazes his story with dark enigma, and Ken Fink stylishly directs with slow, languid camera movements that accentuate detail and foreboding--almost as if from a David Lynch primer.

Although it’s tempting to define “Golden Years” as this summer’s “Twin Peaks,” the King-Richard Rubenstein series is less intricate and more fathomable than the fascinatingly bizarre Lynch-Mark Frost serial whose relatively brief run on ABC last year attracted coverage far out of proportion to its zealous but small cult following.

What both series do have in common is an emphasis on the puzzle. “Golden Years” is a gleaming mystery, and a surprise murder and a science-fiction twist at the end of the premiere hold us in its grip.