Remember the one about the flesh-eating anteater and the littlegirl that died in the mill fire? And then there was the paraplegicdreaming about the vampire? No? Well, these are the principlecharacters of “Stephen King’s Kingdom Hospital,”a show that I can’t help thinking was ABC’s idea of abad joke.
Remaking Lars von Trier’s classic 1994 Danish miniseries,King ditches the creepiness of the original series for somevolatile combination of slapstick comedy, supernatural horror, andthe Psychic Friends Network with a dash of narcissisticself-representation thrown in for flavor.
The premise … where do I even begin? So there’sthis mill in the 19th century, right? And the entire cast of Annieworks there. So, then the mill erupts in flames and nobody thinksto unlock the door where they’ve locked Annie and herfriends. They all die. It’s a hard knock life.
So then, like 100 years later, they build this hospital over it.Surely, we’ve learned from past Stephen King greats thatit’s a bad idea to build anything over a place with a wholebunch corpses rolling around in the ground. But, I guess themanagement never saw Pet Sematary.
Anyway, they built this hospital. And Kingdom Hospital is noordinary hospital. Its logo looks like something designed byAleister Crowley. The security guard’s dog roams around thehalls like a wild coyote. There are psychics with Down syndromecleaning dishes in the basement. Earthquakes disrupt the powerabout every hour. Oh yeah, and dead Annie and all of her friendsdecided heaven was a drag and stuck around and haunt the place.
King says he took his own experience in the hospital after beinghit by a van in 2003 as inspiration for his setting, and whileI’m not clear on what part of this show has any basis inreality, “Kingdom Hospital” isn’t really the typeof place to inspire confidence in the medical care you’rereceiving. Wait, I haven’t even come to the part about theanteaters and the vampires.
So into this mess comes this world-famous artist who gets hit bya van and is left for dead on the side of the road. As he sitsthere, he gets attacked by a raven and dragged out of traffic by agiant anteater with big, pointy teeth. Don’t ask.
He eventually gets picked up and taken to Kingdom Hospital, butwhen they call to notify his wife, she freaks out. “Oh no! Myhusband will never be able to paint again!” she frets.
But perhaps this is a fortuitous turn of events for a world soimpoverished in art that his amateurish paintings of anteaters infront of barns passes for something worthy of internationalacclaim.
Funny, that’s pretty much what I thought when King gothit.
While the befuddled doctors attempt to operate on the painter,he suddenly starts healing rapidly. But while his body’sgetting better, his mind just seems to be getting more and morescrewed up.
The crazy anteater from his paintings starts prancing around thehospital and doing favors for him, animals start talking all aroundhim, he starts seeing little mill-worker Annie being attacked byvampires and — oh, forget it …
The acting is bad, the production values are bad, the music isbad and since it’s set in a hospital, I’m sure the foodis bad, too.
This may be one of the most ridiculous programs aired on networktelevision. Viewers proclaimed “ER” jumped the sharkafter a helicopter fell on Dr. Romano earlier this season. Pshaw!You really want to know what “ER” would look like if itjumped? Tune in to ABC at 9 p.m. on Wednesdays.
