It’s doubtful that many people remember Stephen King’s short lived primetime show, Kingdom Hospital. The show came and went quietly, and was generally ignored by audiences and panned by critics. For most people here in America, that was that, and the show was put to bed.
What most people didn’t (and still don’t) realize was that Kingdom Hospital was an Americanized remake of a far superior television show from Denmark, Lars von Trier’s 1994 miniseries The Kingdom. But now that The Kingdom has been re-released for free viewing through Hulu just in time for Halloween, it’s high time more people discovered this entertaining, chilling, and often hilarious series.
The Kingdom follows the goings on at Denmark’s most advanced hospital, with an large cast of characters that are either doctors, students, and patients. They are initially consumed by job promotions, secret romances, and family issues, but soon they are all drawn into an increasingly serious web of supernatural occurrences taking place around them. Some try to contact spirits, others encounter the ghost of a small girl wondering the hospital, and others deal with a pregnancy that develops at a demonically rapid speed. The series builds tension slowly, sneaking in more and more ghostly aspects until it builds to an exploding conclusion at the end of each season.
What makes The Kingdom so entertaining is that it isn’t just content to be a straightforward ghost story. It takes a cynical view of the upper class hospital workers, and also pokes fun at the cultural rivalry between Sweden and Denmark (a move that will probably go over any Americans head). The humor created from these situations, as well as the hapless romantic and professional ambitions of the hospital staff, merge with the supernatural aspects to create a truly original television experience that is still enjoyable now, more than 15 years after its initial release.
The Kingdom is also interesting because it comes in the midst of a creative crossroads for von Trier. Up until this point, his films had been extremely technical and employed dazzlingly intricate visuals, culminating in 1991’s Europa. Following The Kingdom, von Trier shifted into a much grittier style of filmmaking, using stripped down visuals and almost exclusively handheld cameras to make his international breakthrough, Breaking the Waves, and eventually creating the notorious Dogme 95 movement and spurring on a new generation of Danish filmmaking. Coming in between these two phases of his career, The Kingdom is a unique blend of these two styles, combining interesting and stylish visuals with a documentary style approach to give the series a more realistic feel, while still packing enough special effects to bring the supernatural world to life. It’s television, but it feels enough like a movie that when it was initially released in the US, the four episodes from season one were combined into a massive feature film.
What makes this re-release of The Kingdom worth noting is the fact that it has never been easy to find in the US. You’d have to wait on copies from Netflix or find it somewhere online, since hardly any video stores or DVD retail outlets carried it. Now that both seasons (4 episodes each) are available for free online, it’s finally easy for those with a passing interesting to check it out. For those who have never heard of the series (and there are probably a good number who haven’t), they can easily give it a test run to see what they think. With Halloween right around the corner, it’s the perfect time to check out this ghost story from one of Europe’s true masters of cinema.
A new trailer for The Kingdom can be found here, while the entire series can be located on Hulu for free here.
Though it hasn’t aged exactly like wine, Lars von Trier’s The Kingdom is still an enjoyable and thought provoking ride after over 15 years, and is a nice slice of Danish culture: B+
