Kingdom Hospital

I’ve only ever read one Stephen King novel, in the 9th grade, and that was Carrie. It was…pretty bad. However, my girlfriend is obsessed with Stephen King and insists that he doesn’t suck. And well, I liked the movie adaptations of 1408 and the Mist, so when she (my girlfriend, that is) came home from a trip to Florida wielding a television miniseries written by Stephen King, called Kingdom Hospital, I figured it’d be worth a shot.

First and foremost: BEST OPENING CREDITS SEQUENCE EVER.



Not that you really need to know this going into it, but Kingdom Hospital is essentially Stephen King’s version of a slightly older, Danish miniseries called the Kingdom. It’s not quite a remake, but it’s something close. Kingdom Hospital is a 13-episode miniseries that ran in 2004 originally, and it is mighty interesting. And weird. And awesome.

The gist of it is this: Kingdom Hospital is built on the ruins of what is referred to as “the Old Kingdom,” an older hospital that was burnt down. And the Old Kingdom was built upon the burnt ruins of an old mill that produced uniforms for the Civil War. So we’ve got a hospital built on a hospital built on an old mill. Would it shock you to learn that the place is rather haunted? If you said yes, stop reading this right now and go throw yourself down some stairs because you are clearly not paying attention.

There is a little bit of a story arc to follow, involving the ghost of a little girl named Mary, earthquakes that keep going on at the hospital, and a guy who got hit by a truck and keeps drawing while in a comatose state and interacting with what can only be described as a huge anteater with sharp teeth and a taste for bad puns (and ants). The whole ordeal kind of takes the backseat to the plot from time to time so that other weird stuff can happen, such as one episode where a man is found crucified, but still bleeding, and miracles are occurring. All of which references the Bible, of course, but not every episode is like that. You’ve also of course got all the drama going on between the doctors, particularly Dr. Hook, played by a man who looks and sounds very much like Edward Norton but isn’t, and Dr. Stegman, who is a complete asshole but hilarious nevertheless to watch.

That’s one thing that makes the series so much fun: it bounces around from quirky to dramatic to hilarious to downright surreal. How scary it gets depends on how well you deal with horror-themed things, and while it never really got too creepy, there were some disturbing moments. I loved it most for when it just went all-out strange, like when patients occasionally hallucinate and the doctors break into dancing and singing “na na na na! Na na na na! Hey hey hey! Goodbye!” My particular favorite bits involve a guy with a severed head running around, so that should tell you something. Sure, some episodes are weaker than others, but isn’t that how it always is?

It also seems that Stephen King threw a lot of his own quirks into it. The man who was hit by a truck vaguely parallels his own experience of getting hit by a vehicle, one episode revolves around a retired baseball player (Stephen King luuuurrrrvvveeeessss baseball), characters are reading his books, references are made to other works of his such as the Dark Tower series, and at least twice you hear someone say, “like something horrible out of a Stephen King novel.” And of course the man himself makes a rather entertaining cameo.

So if you hate Stephen King and his writing? I‘d still say try it out, if only for how unique it is. If you love him though, then what the hell are you waiting on? You need to check it out. The first episode is a good 2 hours long and the final episode is an hour, but the rest of the episodes are a nice thirty minutes each, so it’s not too taxing to watch.

[Brett]

GET BONUS: Here, roughly, is the first 10 minutes of the first episode, courtesy of teh Youtube! ENJOY.