The Kingdom
Riget (English title: The Kingdom) is a six-episode Danish television mini-series, created by Lars von Trier in 1994. The mini-series has been cut together into a five-hour movie for distribution in the United Kingdom and United States.
The series is set in the neurological ward of Copenhagen's Rigshospitalet, the city's main hospital, which literally translates into English as "Kingdom Hospital". The show follows a number of characters, both staff and patients, as they discover a number of supernatural phenomena. The show is notable for the muted, sepia colour scheme, a sort of "Dogma"-lite shooting style (with added jump cuts), and the dishwashing kitchen staff in the basement who have Down syndrome and discuss the strange occurrences in the hospital as the plot develops.
Most episodes end with Swedish neurologist, Stig Helmer, looking out to Sweden from the hospital roof and yelling "Dansk Jävlarna" ("Danish scum"), and director Lars von Trier appears over the end credits of every show offering enigmatic observations about the plot. The comic elements and perceived "weirdness" in the series have led to comparisons with Twin Peaks.
The first series ended with numerous questions unanswered, and in 1997, the cast reassembled to produce another mini-series of six episodes, Riget II (The Kingdom II). This series continued exactly from where the first finished, and kept the trademark sepia colouring and shaky camera-work of the first series. Von Trier continued to appear over the end credits. This second series ended with as many questions unanswered as the first series, and a third series was planned. However, due to the death in 1998 of Ernst-Hugo Järegård (who played neurosurgeon Stig Helmer) and the subsequent deaths of Kirsten Rolffes (Mrs Drusse) and the actor who played the male dishwasher, the likelihood of a third series is now very remote.
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Stephen King's Kingdom Hospital
American horror writer Stephen King developed a thirteen-episode mini-series based on Riget, under the title Stephen King's Kingdom Hospital, which was broadcast in 2004. The plot retained many of the elements of Riget, transferring the location of the hospital to Lewiston, Maine, and placing it on the site of a mill built before the Civil War and set on fire by the mills owner after the war's end to collect insurence money. Many children died in the fire. In King's version the "crying girl" was murdered separately to cover up the arson.
Many of the characters retained their names in the Danish original (e.g. Sigrid Drusse became Eleanor Druse, Stig Helmer became Dr. Stegman). Like Helmer in the original, Stegman had recently transferred to the hospital, but from Boston rather than Sweden.
One major addition to the plot was the character Peter Rickman, a painter who is admitted to the hospital with severe injuries to his skull and spine, following a road accident. This character was heavily influenced by King's own experiences when he was hit by a car in Maine in 1999, and from his coma the character witnesses numerous surreal events within the hospital, including the appearance of a giant anteater.
The plot of Riget
The show begins with the admission of a spiritualist patient, Sigrid Drusse, who hears the sound of a girl crying in the elevator shaft. Upon investigation, Drusse discovers that the girl died decades earlier, having been killed by her father to hide her illegitimacy. In order to put the spirit to rest, Drusse searches for the girl's body, ultimately finding it stored in a specimen jar in the hospital's store.
Meanwhile, neurosurgeon Stig Helmer, a recent apointee to the neurology department from Sweden, attempts to cover up his blame for a botched operation which left a young girl in a vegetative state.
Pathologist Dr Bondo, attempts to convince the family of a man dying from liver cancer to donate his liver to the hospital for research. When his request is denied, Bondo has the cancerous liver transplanted into his own body, as the patient had signed an organ donor card, so that the cancer would become his own property and could be kept within the hospital.
Amongst other plotlines, a young neurosurgery student becomes attracted to the nurse in charge of the sleep research laboratory, and a neurologist discovers that she was impregnated by a ghost and that her baby is developing abnormally rapidly.
The cast of Riget and Riget II
Ernst-Hugo Järegård - Stig Helmer
Kirsten Rolffes - Sigrid Drusse
Holger Juul Hansen - Moesgaard
Søren Pilmark - Krogshøj
Ghita Nørby - Rigmor
Baard Owe - Bondo
Birgitte Raaberg - Judith
Udo Kier - Åge Krüger / Little Brother
The cast of Stephen King's Kingdom Hospital
Andrew McCarthy - Dr. Hook
Bruce Davison - Dr. Stegman
Diane Ladd - Sally Druse
Brandon Bauer - Abel Lyon
Jack Coleman - Peter Rickman
Jamie Harrold - Elmer Traff
Allison Hossack - Dr. Christine Draper
Disambiguation
County Kerry is informally referred to as "The Kingdom" in Ireland.
The Kingdom is also the name of an oratorio by the British composer Edward Elgar.
es:The Kingdom
Categories: Stephen King