The King of his own little world Author Stephen King. NOTHING gives Stephen King greater pleasure than immersing himself in a world of isolation and horror. So it's little wonder Under The Dome, based on a book by the acclaimed author, has been such a ratings hit. The show centres on a small town, Chester's Mill, which is cut off from the rest of the world by an impenetrable dome. The crisis brings out the best, and worst, in the residents. Dean Norris, who plays town councillor and used-car salesman James "Big Jim" Rennie, says Under the Dome resonates with viewers because "it says we have a very tenuous grip on civilisation." "If something happens to break it, people go bad really quickly," he says. If people are worried there may not be enough food ... panic sets in. They (producers) divided this show into faith, fear and fascism. King, meanwhile, says King says Under The Dome has apretty simple premise. Alexander Kock as Junior. "Let's take an American community, a nice American community, and pop this big bowl over the whole thing so nobody can get out and nobody can get in, and let's see what happens," he says. My feeling about Under the Dome is thatI love stories about ordinary people in extraordinary situations, to see how some people will rise to that situation and some people will crumble. We're all under the dome (in real life) because so far as we know, this little tiny blue world is all we've got. There's nowhere else to go. You can go to Mars and you can land a rover on there but what they find essentially is dirt with no microbes or anything in it. So I thought, this is what we've got and resources are finite. Population is exploding. The environment is degrading. And if you put one little town in Maine, because Maine is what I know, if you put them under the dome, you create this perfect metaphor. for everything that we're facing in the macrocosm. Here under the dome is microcosm and our world is macrocosm. And I thought, this is terrific. There are a lot of things that are fun to play around with. The lack of law enforcement, and then you ask yourself, if somebody, a strong man like Jim Rennie really takes control, when does thatstrong leadership turn into dictatorship?"So there are a lot of issues there too and a lot of things to play around with that are fun." Natalie Martinez as Deputy Linda, Britt Robertson as Angie and Mike Vogel as Barbie. Like many who have had big-screen success, King has found himself increasinglydrawn to television. It's where writers, directors and actors are heading to flex real creative muscle. "The one thing TV has is time," King says. "Where you've got the time, people come back," King says. They get to know the characters. They get involved with the situation. It becomes almost a part of their lives. And that's a wonderful thing." / DARREN DEVLYN It has all the time in the world to spread out and tell a story. And I've thought for years I've been so behind this concept of serial TV, of stories that are able to develop the way that say, a Dickens novel developed in the 19th Century. It's exactly the same idea. When novels hit their stride in the 19th Century, people said, `we have all the space in the world. And people wrote novels that were four and five volumes long. They were these big, thick things. And TV has that same ability to create things like Lost, like Brideshead Revisited, like Downton Abbey. And hopefully Under the Dome. Under the Dome, Channel 10, Tuesday, 8.30pm