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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Kingdom Hospital

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07:26 / 10.05.04

Who saw this? It was absolutely AWESOME, I thought. The imagery and bizarreness was just fucking brilliant, quite apart from the fact that my wife and I were fairly deeply immersed in Philosopher's Stone Space. When the announcer came on at the end to say the next episode was on BBC 3, we started laughing hysterically...this was Good News.

Fantastically intriguing from the outset, particularly the Toothy Anteater, spreading its razor sharp teeth in slo-mo, and the shot of it sloping across the road to talk to the hit-and-run guy...the fact that all the animals featured in the show 'speak their minds'...loved the raven...'Hey! You look kind of tasty! Think I'll start with your eyes!"

Instant points of 'What the fuck's going on?' - the two Down's Syndrome looking hospital staff that seem to 'know everything' in Dreamspace etc., the little girl in the lift shaft, the aforementioned Sinister Anteater (and it's appearance in the Artists Hit and Run Guys Work in Progress Painting', the Vampire in Dreamspace and other stuff I'll have to watch again without a head full of Psilocybin.

In short, far more instantly appealing and intriguing than Twin Peaks and blistering eye candy so far.

Hooray! Sundays!

09:03 / 10.05.04

Wonder where he got the idea for the main character? :P

I watched it last night and thought it was ok, I'll give the second episode a watch but overall it was just typical King.

I think it was quite successful in the states though so I'm sure someone get let us know how it turns out.

Did like the ant eater though...

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09:05 / 10.05.04

here's a link to the BBC info site, for some background

It is adapted by Stephen King from a Lars von Trier series, which I now utterly have to see.

10:16 / 10.05.04

I watched it and I honestly don't now what to think, yet. I liked it but I crave the strange. I hope it doesn't descend into strange-for-sake-of-strange. (ie, I hope there's an actual story n there somewhere)
You'll only watch weird crap for a couple of episodes before you start looking for something more meaningful to hold your interest.

Still, Andrew McCarthy! Wooo!

10:19 / 10.05.04

Hang on, did the Original "The Kingdom" star Udo Kier and was it shown on late night Channel 4 or BBC2 yonks ago?
Becasue that would explain why it seems so familiar...

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10:45 / 10.05.04

Yes, and I don't know, I've never seen it...

Did you see episode two on BBC 3 straight after?

Loved the gang of down-and-outs baiting Stegman as well, very strange...

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

10:54 / 10.05.04

Missed "Kingdom Hospital", unfortunately, but yes, it is based on Lars von Trier's "The Kingdom", which I bought and watched a few years ago... and am going to spend this afternoon watching again.

I'd like to see KH... I'm not so down on King as many, and a remake that involves an anteater MUST be seen...

I think, given my crapness at staying with TV, I'll probably have to wait until this comes out on DVD.

But if it's anywhere near as good as "The Kingdom" was, you guys are in for a fucking treat!

11:21 / 10.05.04

I hope it doesn't descend into strange-for-sake-of-strange.

That's how most of it felt to me - forced, like part of the brief was "come up with a cult series." I also thought that none of it gelled together particularly well. Some shit comedy, some fairly standard King stuff about dead kids and reunited groups of damaged people coming back to face a terrible evil (at least, I presume that's where we're going with the psychic woman and the blind man), the Kingdom itself (home of big bad = a few grey corridors and some dust)...

Bits of it I liked, but on the whole I felt it was obviously straight TV trying too hard to do weird TV. Sit somebody down in a room for a couple of weeks with copies of Twin Peaks, American Gothic, etc., and tell them to create a recipe for something similar. The Down Syndrome couple, the talking animals, the juxtaposition of cheery, upbeat music and terrible events, the wacky supporting cast.

I was hoping for something much better - and a lot different - from the trailers that BBC2 were running. I'll be watching the next couple, at least, to see if there's any chance of the various elements coming together into a coherent whole.

And I know I'm not the only person who got flashbacks to Garth Merenghi's Darkplace during the pans of the hospital, portentous voiceover and 'heroic doctor drives through scaggy bits of building' sequences.

Scrambled Password Bogus Email

15:18 / 10.05.04

Haha! I thought of Darkplace as well...

16:54 / 10.05.04

Well, yes, there is the Darkplace comparison.

The Downs-syndrome chorus of dishwashers is actually not a King-ism; it's lifted straight from the original. I rather enjoyed this - especially the anteater, which was great - but found bits of it a little obvious. I've got the Von Trier on DVD (Manga did a 2-disc set of the original series) but haven't really got around to watching it properly - one of the few things in my collection like that.

Needless to say, there's no dorky voiceover explaining that the place was built on a site of dead children, and the original has a wonderful, dingy, brown tone that's acheived by transferring from 16mil to 8 mil to video and back and forth until it looks like ass. There's also a little less gratuitous CGI.

Interesting music choices - the Gourds covering Gin and Juice (but with "smoking indo" dubbed out for some dorky reason. We are adults, you know), and, surprisingly, Fountains of Wayne doing "Red Dragon Tattoo". Is it me, or does the Kingdom Hospital stylised "KH" look remarkably like a chinese "Red Dragon" character?:

Mahjongg tile for illustration.

It's enjoyable and all, and the anteater is great - also, I loved the hit-and-runner watching the artist on his TV. In fact, the dreamscape stuff was quite good, but a little too much of the real world was silly for silly's sake. The characters need to be a little eccentric but played dead straight; Bruce Davison was perfect, but I found the janitor and desk clerk a little OTT.

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20:42 / 10.05.04

I know what you mean, but that desk-clerk switchboard guy is just the most wonderfully fucked looking actor on telly at the moment...truly strange looking dude.

The anteater is just fantastic though, and genuinely sinister when it tears into the hit and runperpetrator...loved the teeth, and the hands when it crossed the road.

Really do have to watch it again with less bendy-vision.

09:15 / 12.05.04

No, the original has a dorky voiceover about swamps and executions.

From the original to the remake, they seem to have completely changed where the story's going, because the backstory to the child is completely different. The original never tried to be scary so early on, either, and always seemed to hold it together better (or, fall apart in a really charming way).

That fucking anteater sucks, also. A ghostly anteater? AND IT'S STALKING THE HOSPITAL BUT ONLY YOU CAN SEE! That's not scary. That it was in the painting, and the painting was private, could point to it becoming a better symbol then it is. Right now, it's just wack. And a ghostly and innocent child? I don't care that this was in the original; is the heart monitor going to beep its own fucking internal speaker next? IS THE GUY WHO RAN YOU OVER GOING TO TURN OUT TO BE A CLOWN??

And the show looks like it's gonna take 150% more time to get to the end (unless he's doing series 2 of the original, which if I remember from my sleep-deprived state, was way more bug-fucked), which is gonna blow, and Hook seems to have everyone but the managing man on his side, as opposed to the original where everyone hated him, but they were all in a big Masonic cult and the Hook guy (can't remember his original name) had to fight them aswell.

On the plus, everything in The Kingdom looked so shitty and old and cheap that I never bought the new technology vs. old superstition and death pagan ritual tension that the voiceover kept trying to make you think it was all about, because there was no new technology.

This is one thing I think King could get right. If he stopped giving Hook lines about how great his own brain is. For the love of God, man, shut the fuck up.

Scrambled Password Bogus Email

11:10 / 12.05.04

The Anteater did not suck!

The Anteater ruled!

It had nasty, pointy teeth. Nasty Pointy Teeth!

And it talked!

Talked I tells ya!

How can a talking anteater with carnivorous mandibles suck?

The most it managed was to slurp an ant...after that it savaged a hit-and-run driver!

The Anteater should run for the American presidency.

13:10 / 12.05.04

I've only seen Trier's Kingdom I and it's got to be the best television I've ever seen.

Kingdom Hospital on the other hand is just shite.

13:43 / 12.05.04

Liked the anteater. Thought much of the rest was standard King fare - and actually groaned aloud when the Psychic Old Person was wheeled in to give Non-Specifically Dire Warnings (souls are not at rest? no shit? it's a fucking hospital, love). The fact that the animals talked annoyed me too.

I'll watch it again, but I suspect my interest may pale.

14:53 / 12.05.04

It's an anteater. It eats ants. It's ghostly, it stalks the hospital, it talks, IT EATS ANTS. Is there anything scary about ants? No. Shut up.

14:59 / 12.05.04

It'd be scarier if it ate aunts.

16:13 / 12.05.04

Looks as if he’s dropped the whole pregnant by a ghost storyline ? Somehow I didn’t think that the series would end as brain-bendingly as the original version did.

I thought this was okay – not as good as the Danish version, and a bit slow – but my main gripe was with the fact Steve’d written in his recent knocked-down event in almost exact detail. Purge yer demons, I guess, but still…

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08:26 / 13.05.04

Yes, a giant sinister Aunteater would have been an interesting spin on the original.

_pin, you have aunteater issues. I blame Margaret Thatcher. Deal with this, before it deals with you.

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10:36 / 16.05.04

*bump*, cos it's on tonight, episode 2 on BBC followed by ep. 3 on BBC3.

Eeeeexcellent....

14:39 / 16.05.04

Go easy on the BBC 3 spoilers, chap. Just in case this turns out better than I expect it to...

19:58 / 16.07.04

Ok..so it finished here last night. I liked the ending. Better than most SK endings. He has a problem with endings.
Does anyone know if this is just a miniseries or is this going to be continued next season?

13:36 / 19.07.04

Can't find anything online about a second series. Can find stuff about audience figures dropping off significantly after the first couple of episodes and a resultant shift to a later time-slot.

Is anyone in the UK still watching? I've caught bits and pieces, but it still leaves me cold - it is as disjointed as I thought it might prove to be, with the attempts at humour diluting the already thin horror-lite.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

06:28 / 15.03.05

I finally got round to watching this (picked up the DVDs for twenty quid in HMV)- did the lot in about a week. And a lot of dope.

The first couple of episodes really didn't grab me at all- I'm not sure I'd have kept up with it had I been watching it on TV. Watching them all back to back, though, I found myself getting caught up in the more soapy aspects of the thing, and by the end I was quite sad it had finished, even though I thought the last episode was fairly pants, and was guilty of all the things King tends to do these days which make his books in no way as scary as his earlier stuff.

I was fairly drunk, it must be said, but there seemed to be a few loose ends- not in a "leave these for a notional second season" way, more in a "let's just hope nobody notices" sort of way. I was expecting some kind of big reveal about "bad boy" Paul, for example. And the ghost ambulance. Although I may just have not caught on to these, and they may have actually been there.

I wouldn't say it was classic television, but I certainly enjoyed it a great deal. And it did have its moments. Although it is true that often the bits that worked best were the bits taken directly from the LvT Kingdom.

And it DID have an anteater...

The episode "Butterfingers", with the baseball player, seemed a little out of place somehow- it resolved itself by the end, like a one-shot X-Files episode, and didn't really seem to fit into the continuing plot anywhere. It was a good episode, but I thought it broke the flow up a little, putting me in mind of the Prisoner's "Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darling".

And some of the "comedy" bits (you could tell which were the comedy bits, as the Comedy Cellist popped up on the soundtrack)- the headless corpse running around, for example- were just annoying.

So yeah. Mixed feelings- it was good, but it's mostly left me with an over-riding urge to watch The Kingdom again. But, y'know, that's no great hardship...