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''Stephen
King's Kingdom Hospital''
(which premieres on March 3 at 9 p.m. and will air thereafter on Wednesdays
at 10 p.m.) is a saga about the strange doings at a medical facility, located
(as usual) in the Maine
mythscape of King's macabre imagination. It's your standard-issue,
ultramodern health-care establishment, staffed with healers, quacks, and
bureaucrats...except that the building itself is built on top of an older
version of the hospital where some very bad medicine was once practiced.
The
previous Kingdom -- accessible to the current hospital's supernaturally
inclined patients and doctors -- has all the charm of a septic tank.
''Imagine the worst place you can think of,'' says Bruce Davison (''X-Men''),
who plays the half-mad control freak Dr. Stegman. ''Like waking up drunk in
your own vomit at the Chelsea
Hotel in the '60s. That
sort of place.'' Uhhh...anyway. The sets are quite evocative.
But the
supernatural setting is only one example of how truly ''Stephen Kingy'' this
creep show is. Mounted by the production team behind the writer's ''Rose
Red'' and ''Storm of the Century,'' ''Kingdom Hospital'' is his reinvention
of ''The Kingdom,'' a mid-'90s Danish TV miniseries created by director Lars
von Trier (''Breaking the Waves''). While remaining true to the original's
blend of drama, horror, and black comedy, King has made it his own by adding
the character of Peter Rickman (played by ''Dynasty'''s Jack Coleman), an
artist who is hit by a van while jogging along a road near his house and
nearly dies. Familiar?
''This
is Stephen's most intensely autobiographical _expression_ of what happened to
him,'' says exec producer Mark Carliner, referring to the 1999 accident that
shattered King's body. ''This is coming from a very deep place. Can you
imagine what someone like Stephen King sees while hovering between life and
death?''
King's
true-life story informs the series, but his isn't the only one. Coleman's
mother died early in production, which made his scenes with a reappearing
ghost named Mary (Jodelle Micah Ferland) emotionally loaded -- ''a little too
real,'' he says. There's also Andrew McCarthy, whose Dr. Hook secretly lives
in the hospital's basement, and is piecing together Kingdom's history. ''This
is not a wasted opportunity on me. It's the best part I've had in years,''
says the ''St. Elmo's Fire'' star. ''He's a man who's lived. He's been
disappointed. He understands the reality of the world and is still in the
game. I'd say all that fits me.''
--by Jeff Jensen
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