While film renderings of Stephen King’s work frequently result in celluloid classics or near-classics – Carrie, The Shining, Children of the Corn, Misery, Stand By Me, The Shawshank Redemption – TV versions tend to go the other way. Series adaptations of several of the books that made the aforementioned classic movies sank without trace, while many others failed to capture his magic. Under the Dome (which spread the tale of a city trapped under an impenetrable shield across three turgid series) and 11.22.63 (in which James Franco travelled back in time to try to avert the assassination of John F Kennedy) proved that, even with the best source material, maintaining suspense over several episodes is an undertaking only for the most fearless.

The Outsider (Sky Atlantic) is not the adaptation to give the lie to this rule. It … takes … an … age. The first few episodes (the opening couple were broadcast back to back on Monday) resemble a high-class episode of CSI played at half-speed as we follow an investigation into the rape, mutilation and murder of 11-year-old Frankie Peterson, whose body is discovered in the woods of a small town in Oklahoma. Scenes of damning evidence linking Frankie’s little league coach (and popular teacher) Terry Maitland to the killing are interleaved with those of his arrest by detective Ralph Anderson during a baseball match – in full view of the spectators, so sure is Anderson of Maitland’s guilt. After all, his fingerprints are all over the body and the van used to abduct Frankie, while eyewitnesses place Maitland, bloodied, at the scene.

Unfortunately for the authorities, incontrovertible CCTV, eyewitness and forensic evidence emerge that places him miles away at the time. How could he have been in two places at once? Could it be something to do with the hooded, deformed figure that lurks in the background of every investigation site?

You know, I think it could. As the series wears on, taking itself no less seriously and moving no less ponderously, the supernatural elements are increasingly embraced. Maitland is shot and killed by the murdered boy’s brother, who is in turn shot by Anderson. Maitland’s daughter begins to have nightmares/visions/hallucinations, featuring a “blurry-faced” man, that are full of threats. Another detective is attacked in a barn, where clothes identical to the ones Maitland was wearing during his supposed murderous assault on Frankie are found, this time with a belt buckle covered in his prints – but from a time before Maitland was born.

The details pile up, but intrigue fails to mount. The killing of Maitland hollows the thing out early on – when there is no protagonist in desperate need of justice, the stakes fall dramatically – and progress is so slow that there is plenty of time to miss him. Thank God, then, for the arrival of Cynthia Erivo as Holly Gibney, whose performance is so good that it slaps you awake. Even so, the glacial pace doesn’t pick up immediately; Gibney has to wander round for a few episodes before being given something proper to do. She is a private investigator who is on the autistic spectrum and possesses some kind of extrasensory perception, which I presume will come in useful in the second half of the series, if we ever get there. Slashed corpses aside, Erivo is the vessel for the most potent horror so far. She gives such a fine sense of the terror bubbling under the robotic-obsessive veneer maintained by Gibney to deal with a world that threatens to overwhelm her that you find yourself loosening your collar and taking bigger lungfuls of air every time she appears.

The other performances are good, too, but the jumping storyline, the longueurs and the commitment to filming everything in semi-darkness and/or from five metres away, through others rooms and doorways, work hard against them. Also, beyond the jump scares (half of which you can’t see), The Outsider doesn’t seem, unlike King’s best work and the best adaptations – Carrie on adolescent turmoil, Stand By Me on class, Misery on thwarted love and lives – to have anything wider to say.

I note with concern that (another) TV adaptation of King’s The Stand, which is twice the length of The Outsider and contains roughly 800 times its world-building, is in the works. I am giving you a heads-up now so you can book a sabbatical, take early retirement or arrest time itself in order to watch it. Rest, hydrate and I will see you there – because King remains the master and one day he will be rightly served.