Kingdom Come Back

This weekend, we had one of our more enjoyable and frustrating television experiences. First, a bit of background.

Several years ago, before we had a DVR or even a DVD player, we were flipping through our cable TV guide. We saw a listing on some movie channel for something called "The Kingdom,"a movie about a haunted hospital. We were intrigued, but then we noted that the movie was four hours long. And in Danish. We passed.

Still, another night we were up late, and we saw the movie listed again. We thought, "What the heck, let's give it a shot."

We were hooked.

"The Kingdom" (or, "Riget") was the brainchild of a famous--well, OK, the famous--Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier ("Breaking the Waves," 1996; "Dancer in the Dark," 2000). It originally appeared on Danish television as a four-part miniseries in 1994 (and we were as surprised as anyone to find out there was such a thing as Danish television), and tells of the strange and supernatural goings on at Kingdom Hospital; imagine "ER" set in Hell.

What makes the show impressive, more than its plot, is its depth. There are no undeveloped characters. The ensemble includes Dr. Stig Helmer (Ernst-Hugo Jaregard), a Denmark-hating Swedish expatriate, who has come to the Kingdom to escape one scandal and who has quickly found himself enmeshed in another one; Frau Drusse (Kirsten Rollfes), a hypochondriacal spiritualist determined to discover the hospital's secrets; Dr. Einar Moesgaard (Holger Juul Hansen), a well-meaning, somewhat bumbling administrator who just wants everyone to get along; and several other patients, orderlies, and staffers, each with their own quirks and intriguing storylines.

Anyway, we watched. And watched. And watched. Long into the night we watched. We wanted to sleep, but we also wanted to see how it all turned out. As the clock ticked closer to the movie's endtime, we forced ourselves to stay awake. Just a few minutes more. . . . Ah, here it is! The ending. . . .

AND IT DIDN'T END!!!

Because, you see, what we had been watching was actually "The Kingdom" SERIES ONE! In other words, there was a whole 'nother SEASON of the show, but THAT was not shown on this channel. Nor could we find it anywhere else. And it wasn't like the show ended on some mildly disturbing "The End. . . .or is it?" kind of note. We're talking full-on cliffhanger. We were not happy.

Anyway, some ten years on, we had pretty much forgotten about "The Kingdom" (and we had ignored the American Stephen King adaptation, "Kingdom Hospital," 2004). This weekend, however, WOS unwittingly put "The Kingdom" on our Netflix instant-watch queue. We saw her starting to watch it, and we warned her about our experience. "You'll be disappointed," we said. "The show just ends and leaves you hanging."

"Well," she said, showing me the queue, "couldn't we just watch the second series?"

?!?

Yes! There it was, "The Kingdom, Series Two"! Woo-hoo!

So we re-watched Series One. (WOS loved it.) We sat down to watch Series Two. It picked up right where Series One left off. The stories of Helmer and Drusse and Moesgaard and all the other wacky denizens continued unfolding before our rapt gaze. Who cared that it was another four-plus hour commitment? We would have resolution!

The only problem was. . . THE STORY DOESN'T END AT THE END OF SERIES TWO EITHER!!!!!!

Obviously, von Trier had some intentons of doing a "Series Three" (again, the ending was far too inconclusive to be anything other than a cliffhanger), but, for whatever reason, it has never appeared.

In closing, then, we highly recommend "The Kingdom." It is a captivating story. Prepare yourself, though, for some frustration at the end.