The First TV Show That Ever Scared Me

The first time I saw Pennywise, it was by accident. I must have been eight or nine, flipping through channels late at night when I stumbled on a clown crouched in a storm drain. His grin was too wide; his voice, too sweet. Before I even knew who Stephen King was or what a miniseries could be, I felt a jolt: the sense that the world wasn’t as safe as adults liked to pretend. That a monster might be waiting in the gutter, laughing at how easy it was to draw us in.

That memory came rushing back this past weekend, when It: Welcome to Derry—the new HBO Max prequel expanding King’s universe—made its debut. Set in the early ‘60s in the town of Derry, Maine, the series traces how the deep-seated evil in the town first took hold and how its recurring pattern of terror began, decades before the children who would later call themselves the Losers’ Club would confront it. More than three decades after the 1990 It miniseries first terrified living rooms, the story has come full circle. But for me, it always begins in that flickering glow of late-night TV, with Tim Curry’s grin etched into my childhood imagination.

Based on King’s 1986 novel, It told the story of seven outcast kids who discover that the town’s tragedies—missing children, mysterious deaths—stem from a creature that awakens every 27 years to feed. It often appears as a clown named Pennywise, a shape-shifting predator that thrives on fear itself. The show felt like nothing I’d ever seen. It was strange, dark, and hypnotic—part coming-of-age story, part fever dream. But what stayed with me was Curry. His Pennywise was both vaudeville and nightmare, his voice sliding between singsong playfulness and guttural menace. He showed that horror doesn’t always need darkness to scare you. Sometimes terror is brightest in daylight in a clown suit, with balloons bobbing like bait.

What made It so haunting was how clearly it understood childhood fear. The Losers’ Club weren’t warriors or chosen ones; they were kids with stutters, asthma, strict parents, or bruises they didn’t talk about. Together, they faced not just the monster in the sewer but the cruelty of adults who refused to see what was happening. Their flaws felt uncomfortably close to my own. Watching them meant realizing monsters didn’t always come from other worlds. Sometimes they fed on what was already there: loneliness, shame, the dread of not belonging.

That truth stayed with me in the years that followed. Fear wasn’t just sharp teeth or glowing eyes. It was exposure—someone seeing what hurt you most and using it against you. When Pennywise preyed on each child’s private terror, it felt like a revelation: horror was personal. It reached into the cracks you tried to hide and widened them until you couldn’t look away.

At the time, I didn’t have language for any of it. I only knew my heart raced, that I wanted to turn the TV off but couldn’t, that even the static afterward felt charged with menace. The clown followed me into sleep, into sidewalks with storm drains, into birthday parties where balloon strings brushed my wrist like warnings. It became an initiation: the first story to show me that fear could be entertainment, yes, but also instruction. A mirror with teeth.

Looking back, the miniseries wasn’t prestige TV. It was network horror, stitched together with budget limits and broadcast restraint. But impact doesn’t depend on polish. Sometimes, it’s about timing—what you’re ready to see, even if you don’t yet understand why. For me, It was the first story to peel back the curtain and whisper: the world is more dangerous, stranger, and sadder than you think. But you can face it. You can even triumph.

The line that echoes most for me comes near the end: “We all float down here.” In King’s story, it’s what Pennywise tells the children he lures into the sewers—a taunt heavy with symbolism. Their bodies float in the dark beneath Derry, but so do their fears, suspended and unspoken. The phrase feels like a promise, a reminder that what we bury never truly disappears. As a kid, I heard it as a chant that stuck in my head like gum on a shoe. Now it feels more like a warning about inevitability: the way fear and grief drift with us across time.

Its real lesson was quieter: fear never disappears. It only transforms, which may be why King’s story keeps being retold, from the two-part film decades later to It: Welcome to Derry. Growing up isn’t about banishing it. It’s about learning to carry it without letting it carry you away.