'The Outsider' is an intriguing and chilling supernatural crime drama

As the Charlie Daniels Band once sang, "The devil went down to Georgia. He was lookin' for a soul to steal."

The devil, or something very close to it, arrives gradually and terrifyingly in a small Georgia town in Richard Price's deeply creepy, slow-burning HBO adaptation of Stephen King's paranormal police procedural The Outsider.

At first glance, the paranormal thrills of King may not seem to be a natural match for the gritty, street crime poetry of Price, whose last series outing was the excellent judicial thriller The Night Of, but stick with The Outsider's slow and determined unravelling of its cunning changes in genre and you'll soon see that it is, in fact, a perfect pairing.

When the body of a young boy is found, mauled and savaged almost beyond recognition, in the woods outside the small town of Cherokee, local, glum-faced police detective Ralph Anderson (Ben Mendelsohn) quickly comes to the conclusion, based on video evidence and witness testimony, that the culprit is innocent, beloved English teacher and little league coach Terry Maitland (Jason Bateman).

In a fit of outrage and vindictive righteousness, Anderson has Maitland arrested during a game in front of hundreds of the town's parents, ready to swiftly bring him to book for his unspeakable crimes, while causing havoc to the town's social life and interpersonal relationships in the process.

The problem is that although the police's evidence seems airtight, Maitland and his weary but effective lawyer Howard Solomon (Bill Camp) have equally airtight evidence that shows that the English teacher couldn't have done it and wasn't even in town when the murder occurred.

As an increasingly perplexed and ashamed Anderson begins to try to figure out how one person could possibly occupy two realities seemingly simultaneously, things take a nasty, jolting and gut-wrenching turn and soon everything is upside down and tainted by an unseen, inexplicable supernatural presence that seems to be pulling the strings - passing from one victim to the next like an invisible virus of insatiable evil that can't be stopped.

What starts out as dark, gritty and familiar procedural fare carefully and meticulously deepens into a Stephen King mystery that examines the novelist's favourite territory - the space that opens up when we're confronted with the inexplicable and how we react to it.

It is anchored by a complex and suitably gruff hardboiled performance from the excellent, often underrated Mendelsohn and a star turn from Oscar-nominated Cynthia Erivo, who makes her appearance in episode three as the familiar King-favoured character of a savant with an openness to belief in the supernatural.

The Outsider is a satisfyingly intriguing and chilling story of how our refusal to accept the hard-to-explain could be fatal if we don't open our eyes to it. The devil certainly comes to Georgia, looking for souls to steal, but, thanks to a group of ordinary, down-to-earth small towners with the capacity to change their minds, he may not win this time.

• 'The Outsider' screens weekly on M-Net and Showmax on Thursday nights.