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The Kingdom (Danish title: Riget) is an eight-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. It is currently distributed on DVD in the United States by Koch-Lorber Films and on Madman Entertainment's Directors Suite label in Australia/NZ. The series is set in the neurosurgical ward of Copenhagen's Rigshospitalet, the city and country's main hospital, nicknamed "Riget". "Riget" means "the realm" or "the kingdom" and leads one to think of "dødsriget", the realm of the dead. 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 "Dogme"-lite shooting style (with added jump cuts), and the dishwashing kitchen staff in the basement who have Down syndrome and discuss in intimate detail, the strange occurrences in the hospital as the plot develops (without ever being involved in the story themselves).
The first series ended with numerous questions unanswered, and in 1997, the cast reassembled to produce another mini-series of four 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 even more questions unanswered than the first, and a third series was planned. However, due to the death in 1998 of Ernst-Hugo Järegård (who played the Swedish 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. Von Trier actually wrote the third and final season, but the production was not picked up by DR. At that point five regular cast members had died and it seemed impossible to continue the series. Those lost scripts were sent to the production of Stephen King's Kingdom Hospital, but it's unclear whether they used the scripts or not. Despite being a mini-series, it appears a one of the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die
PlotImage:Riget-opening-logo.jpg Opening logo Image:Ernst.hugo.riket.jpg Ernst-Hugo Järegård as Doctor Helmer Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.
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.
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 medical student becomes attracted to the nurse in charge of the sleep research laboratory, a ghostly ambulance appears and disappears every night, and a neurosurgeon discovers that she was impregnated by a ghost and that her baby is developing abnormally rapidly. In every episode two people doing dishwashing in the cellar appear, and talk about the strange happenings at Riget. It seems like these two actually know much, if not even more than everyone else, which is especially strange considering the fact that these two were diagnosed with Downs syndrome. This seems like one more paradox made by Von Trier, and hints to the choires of Greek drama. CastErnst-Hugo Järegård - Stig Helmer EpisodesRiget I
Riget II
Stephen King's Kingdom HospitalAmerican 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. Many of the characters retained their names from the Danish original (e.g. Sigrid Drusse became Sally Druse, Stig Helmer became Dr. Stegman). A significant difference in the American series was the introduction of the character of a talking giant anteater in the role of spirit guide/death/Anubis/Antibus.
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