Stephen King's new show Mr Mercedes is the most unsettling thing he's written

Brendan Gleeson and Harry Treadaway star in crime-thriller Mr Mercedes

Babies, children and pets. They're often the first to go. Usually, unpleasantly. Fright connoisseurs understand the entertainment value of watching a fellow adult meet their gruesome end, but when the kitten carks it? Oh, the horror!

So say what you want about Stephen King's books but the dude knows all the shortcuts to motor right into your feels and fears. And in Mr Mercedes he hurtles towards you, and them, at top speed.

I can't speak to how faithfully adapted Lightbox's new show is to King's novel but I've already seen two of those three knocked off and I'm only four episodes in.

And call it a hunch but I'm pretty sure the friendly golden lab and that peaceful pet tortoise are not much longer for this world either. There's certainly been plenty of groundwork laid for their premature demise. Least of all the evil glares our killer, Mr Mercedes, keep throwing at the smiley pup and his good natured owner...

The show is something of a departure from the supernatural horror that King made his name with. Instead, it's a grounded crime thriller, almost a procedural, about a retired cop who is haunted by the one case he couldn't solve. In this instance, the Mr Mercedes mass murder.

It's this event that opens the series in gruesome, bloodstained fashion. A line of hopeful job seekers are camped outside a jobs fair overnight, all hoping to be first in when the doors open.

Amongst those in line are an antagonistic crank, a nice family man and a struggling solo mum who has had to bring her baby with her on this cold, cold night because she can't afford a sitter.

A silver Mercedes glides up. The driver puts on a clown mask - this is Stephen King, after all - and then accelerates straight into the queue of people killing 16. It's quite awful.

Harry Treadaway stars in the crime-thriller Mr Mercedes

It's also fairly unsettling given last year's similar attacks in Stockholm and Charlottesville, and the 2016 attacks in Nice and Berlin, where crowds of innocents were deliberately targeted and run into by terrorists driving a truck or a car.

King has said that the inspiration for the book, which came out in 2014, was the true story of a woman who drove her car into a McDonald's. However, production on the series only started a month before the Nice attack occurred. You have to wonder if there was ever a conversation about continuing, given the similarities. And was that conversation then revisited with each passing attack? And if not, why not?

Regardless, it's no exaggeration to say that because of its grim, awful and portentous real world connection that opening scene is one of the most horrific things ever to spring from King's twisted mind.

Of course after that inciting incident the series quickly settles into a fairly stock standard groove as a game of cat and mouse plays out between the grizzled, borderline alcoholic, retired detective and the too clever by half, fresh-faced psycho killer.

King described the book as his "first hard boiled detective novel" and you can kind of tell. So far, at least, he hasn't strayed too far from genre conventions - although he has found space to insert his typical King-isms.

There's the aforementioned penchant for horror clowns, while an incestuous relationship ticks off King's proclivity for icky perversity. An early scene of a poor kid at play, rolling a tyre down the main street takes care of his outdated shorthand and world view.

But King is nothing if not entertaining. Even with all his obviousness. Heck, maybe because of it. And Mr Mercedes has been entertaining.

Holland Taylor stars in crime-thriller Mr Mercedes

A lot of its success has to be attributed solely to Brendan Gleeson, the Irish veteran, who manages to make his cantankerous retired detective, Brian Hodges, somewhat likable. His performance elevates the whole show.

Harry Treadwell is fine, acting weird and glaring malevolently in the title role. But the show is stolen by the glint in Holland Taylor's eye as she plays Hodges' randy neighbour Ida, whose propositioning of the overweight, out of shape ex-dick is due entirely to the convenience of him living right next door.

It's fair to say that adaptations of Stephen King's books don't have a great hit rate. But as this was developed by multiple Emmy award winner David E. Kelley, the guy behind hits like Ally McBeal, Boston Legal and, more recently, the acclaimed Big Little Lies, the quality is here.

True, it's not going into the pantheon of all time great television, but so far it's entertaining enough and an easy watch.

Apart from those occassional moments that King does so well when it becomes a very uneasy watch indeed. In the best cover-your-eyes-and-peek-through-your-fingers way.

Let's just say that I'm not getting too attached to that cute, smiley dog...