History Series / KingdomHospital

While billed as a medical drama with twists, ''Kingdom Hospital'' also happens to be a Ghost Story, written, directed, and produced by -- of all people -- Creator/StephenKing, whose influence shows up without doubt as soon as the first episode. However, King adapted it, with permission, from the Danish series ''Series/{{Riget}}''.

This series contains NightmareFuel and a rather sizable number of creepy moments. Strangely, at no point does it actively employ the RuleOfScary.

* AFormYouAreComfortableWith: Antubis, the anteater, is really the Egyptian god Anubis ([[ArtisticLicenseReligion and somewhere, an Egyptologist is crying]]). He looks like an anteater due to Mary's misunderstanding of his name. His form as Paul is Mary's belief that everyone has good inside of them, even Paul.

** The ghost boy Paul is haunting the hospital because he was [[spoiler: one of Dr. Gottreich's patients at the old Kingdom, and died in the 1939 fire that destroyed the building. Dr. Gottreich died in the same fire after a young Sally Druse hit him with a fire axe in self-defense after he tried to lobotomize her.]]

* LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters: The series loses focus as it goes on primarily due to its tendency to bring in at least one new character per episode without resolving anything with the previously established characters.

[[caption-width-right:244:Villain and protagonist side by side - the villain's the clean-cut one here, by the way.]]

''Kingdom Hospital'' is a medical drama with a twist: the hospital is haunted, and its cast finds itself dealing with increasingly odd and creepy phenomena on a daily basis, punctuated by the occasional earthquake. The series opens with Peter Rickman, a helpless artist thrust into sudden dreams and paralysis by a drunk driver, being escorted to this hospital - followed by a host of oddities following in his wake, up to and including a ghostly child, an odd anteater-marsupial hybrid which seems to be something more than he appears, and an odd adversary who conspires to mark Peter for death.

While billed as a medical drama with twists, ''Kingdom Hospital'' also happens to be a Ghost Story, written, directed, and produced by - of all people - Creator/StephenKing, whose influence shows up without doubt as soon as the first episode. However, King adapted it, with permission, from the Danish series ''Series/{{Riget}}''.

This series contains NightmareFuel and a rather sizeable number of creepy moments. Strangely, at no point does it actively employ the RuleOfScary.

* AbortedArc: Creator/StephenKing already had the next season story-boarded and ready to roll. There are so many loose plot threads left over that it's amazing this show is usually classified as a "mini-series" instead of "season one of a cancelled show."

* AuthorAvatar: Peter Rickman--the details of his accident are precisely those of King's own brush with death.

* ComedicSociopathy: Stegman. Stegman, Stegman, ''Stegman.'' The man finds himself on the receiving end of this, with people delighting in his misery, more than once - especially the random guys who hang outside the hospital and laugh whenever he discovers the latest damage to his car.

* DoctorsDisgracefulDemotion: One of the antagonists had this trope in his backstory. He'd gotten in trouble for botching a surgery and it cost him his reputation, getting him kicked out of his cushy New York Hospital and sent to the titular one. He was so arrogant that he actually started to believe that the botched surgery was orchestrated by a conspiracy still trying to ruin his life.

* JuryDuty: Hospital maintenance man Jonathan B. Goode is never seen until the last episode, with assorted reasons for not showing up. In episode 7, it's because he's been called for jury duty - then after this is revealed, there's a cut to the courtroom where they're calling up members of the jury pool, and Mr. Goode is also a no-show. When Dr. Stegman finally meets him and asks him about it in the finale, he explains it as "Took care of it. Knew a guy."

* MadDoctor: Klaus Gottreich and his great-grandson Egas Gottreich. Klaus is a firm believer in psychosurgery - he claims he can rewire people's brains for the purpose of altering their memories and making them no longer feel pain, [[spoiler:by using tools that are little more than ice picks; in fact, he killed Mary Jenkins with them.]] Egas is just as crazy, referring to the idea of germs and sanitation as "twiddle-twaddle".
* MadnessMantra: one of the few times we see a human side to Dr. Stegman, he breaks down over the surgical screwup that made Mona Klingermann vegetative, and mutters "I used to hate myself, I like myself now," over and over.
* MeaningfulName: The so-called Old Kingdom is the hospital built in the 1930s--it was called "Gottreich Hospital" after its founder, Dr. Egas Gottreich.
* MythologyGag:

* RetroactiveRecognition: Creator/EvangelineLilly makes a minute-long cameo just a couple months prior to her breakout role in ''Series/{{Lost}}'' (she appears in episode 8 as a woman murdered by her husband when he discovers her infidelity; her entire part is spent sleeping naked and showing a massive dragon tattoo on her back).

* SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong: Twice, resulting in a CosmicRetcon both times. First, [[spoiler: when Earl Candleton goes back in time and gets a second chance to win the World Series for his team. When he succeeds, the doctors suddenly find their patient is missing - in fact, he'd never been there in the first place, and almost nobody realizes it. In the finale, this is done on a bigger scale as the time-traveling heroes stop the Gates Falls Mill from burning down, preventing many deaths and resulting in the arrests of the Gottreich brothers. When they return to the present, they find that, among other changes, Mary Jenkins is now the founder of the hospital.]]

* WhatDoYouMeanItsNotSymbolic: {{Invoked}} and flogged like a dead horse in "On the Third Day", which recreates the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus through the same thing (including changing water into wine, the miracle of the loaves and fishes, healing of the sick of severe ailments - including Otto's near-blindness - and then the disappearance of his body, leaving only a bloodstained sheet) happening to Reverend Jimmy Criss, a "miracle worker" who works nearby. Worse yet, it was sometimes listed as "The Passion of Reverend Jimmy".

* RetroactiveRecognition: Creator/EvangelineLily makes a minute-long cameo just a couple months prior to her breakout role in ''Series/{{Lost}}'' (she appears in episode 8 as a woman murdered by her husband when he discovers her infidelity; her entire part is spent sleeping naked and showing a massive dragon tattoo on her back).

* FriendlyToTheWaiter: Dr. Hook is friendly and respectful to everyone in the hospital, regardless of station, and in return they supply various favors for him. Compare that to Stegman, who believes he shouldn't even have to share an elevator with patients.

* DecaptitationPresentation: Elmer tries this with the head of a cadaver who vaguely resembles him, as a bizarre prank on Dr. Massingale (also his way of flirting). It goes ''breathtakingly'' wrong, and he spends a large chunk of the series hunting the head down before he gets in trouble.

%%* TheAllegedCar: The fate of [[spoiler:Stegman's Jaguar]].

* BlindWithoutEm: Otto, who occasionally [[DroppedGlasses loses them for comedic effect.]]
%%* BloodyHilarious: Hellooooo, operating room!
%%* ButtMonkey: Stegman.
%%* ComedicSociopathy: Stegman. Stegman, Stegman, ''Stegman.''

%%* CreepyChild: Mary, [[spoiler:even if she is more benevolent than dangerous]].
%%* DarkWorld: The Old Kingdom.

%%* LiteralGenie: A lawyer asks for a new heart. Sure enough...he gets one.

* RunningGag: The maintenance guy Johnny B. Goode is never around and always has a different substitute in for him. At the end of the series, he finally shows up to work and [[spoiler:turns out to be Stephen King.]]

%%* WhatDoYouMeanItsNotSymbolic: {{Invoked}} and flogged like a dead horse in "On the Third Day." Worse yet, it was sometimes listed as "The Passion of Reverend Jimmy."

Not to be confused with ''Franchise/KingdomHearts''. [[TheParody To be confused]] whenever possible with ''Series/GarthMarenghisDarkplace''.

* AbortedArc: Creator/StephenKing already had the next season story-boarded and ready to roll. To be perfectly honest, there are so many loose plot threads left over that it's amazing this show is usually classified as a "mini-series" instead of "season one of a cancelled show."
* AlmostKiss
* TheAllegedCar: The fate of [[spoiler:Stegman's Jaguar]].
* AssholeVictim: [[spoiler:People who go into Kingdom Hospital and don't check out include Dave Hoonan, the stoned man who hit Peter Rickman and later fell off his roof; Rolf Pederson, a convicted murderer who tried to commit suicide via poison; and Sheldon Fletcher, a philandering lawyer who had sex with an employee, got her pregnant and fired her when she needed time off from work to recover from an abortion he'd made her get, who suffers a heart attack in the courtroom where he's being sued over his actions.]]

* BackStory: Dealt with in the main story, inevitably.

* BloodyHilarious: Hellooooo, operating room!
* ButtMonkey: Stegman.
* CATTrap: Averted in "Butterfingers." Earl Candleton never makes it into the machine - Dr. Hook cancels his MRI at the last minute when he finds out Candleton has a pacemaker, which would fail and most likely kill Candleton if he went in.
* ColourCodedForYourConvenience: Averted, fully - the folks who laugh Stegman down are the sort who you'd pass without a glance on the street.
* ComedicSociopathy: Stegman. Stegman, Stegman, ''Stegman.''
* CoolCar: The [[spoiler:haunted]] 1952 Chevrolet ambulance.

* CreepyChild: Mary, [[spoiler:even if she is more benevolent than dangerous]].
* DarkWorld: The Old Kingdom.
* DeanBitterman: Stegman again. He's the head neurosurgeon at the hospital, after getting removed from a hospital in Boston... which he frequently reminds people he prefers.

* FlatEarthAtheist / HollywoodAtheist: Stegman fits both of these tropes nicely. At one point, when asked his opinion of a local religious group who believed their pastor would rise from the dead in three days, he said they should all be sterilized and sent to the gulags of Siberia as slave labor.

* LikesOlderWomen and DoggedNiceGuy: Elmer in regards to Lona. Unlike most [[DoggedNiceGuy Dogged Nice Guys]], he makes it clear he wants a sexual relationship with her; however, it's clear he doesn't just want sex.
* LiteralGenie: A lawyer asks for a new heart. Sure enough...he gets one.

* MoodWhiplash: There's a lot of humor. Most of it fairly macabre, some of it just bizarre.
* MythologyGag: In the original miniseries, Stig Helmer's CatchPhrase is "Danish scum!" When Dr. Stegman's car is vandalized in the remake, he yells "Maine hick scum!"

* RuleOfDrama: Eventually, it all boils down to being a ghost story. ''Written by Creator/StephenKing.''
* RuleOfFunny: In the second or third episode of the show, at the very end... the staff breaks out into a [[spoiler: ''musical number'', complete with dancing in the OR, corpses sliding out in the morgue and singing along, and general freakiness.]] Anyone who doesn't think this is a dark comedy doesn't have his head screwed on tight. That was a {{Homage}} to ''Series/TheSingingDetective''.

* SurrealHorror: All over the place.
** SurrealHumor: Almost as prevalent.

* {{Tsundere}}: Elmer sees Lona as this; in the beginning, she's just annoyed and confused with how exactly to make it clear to the significantly younger man, whose father she works for, that a romantic relationship is out of the question. She tried the direct way, that didn't work, and well, Lona's a fairly direct person. Later, when the supernatural screws with them, she tells him to kiss her, treats him the same as before once they get out of the morgue (long story), and then, uses his affection for her to get him to help her with some important tests she wants to do. At the end, she seems unsure what her relationship with him is, while he still wants a romantic relationship with her.

* WhatDoYouMeanItsNotSymbolic: {{Invoked}} and flogged like a dead horse in "On the Third Day." Worse yet, it was sometimes listed as "The Passion of Reverend Jimmy."

Not to be confused with ''VideoGame/KingdomHearts''. [[TheParody To be confused]] whenever possible with ''Series/GarthMarenghisDarkplace''.

* AssholeVictim: [[spoiler:People who go into Kingdom Hospital and don't check out include Dave Hoonan, the stoned man who hit Peter Rickman and later fell off his roof; Rolf Pederson, a convicted murderer who tried to commit suicide via poison; and Sheldon Fletcher, a philandering lawyer who had sex with an employee, got her pregnant and fired her when she needed time off from work to recover from an abortion he'd made her get, who suffers a heart attack.]]

* CATTrap: Averted in "Butterfingers." Earl Candleton never makes it into the machine - Dr. Hook cancels his MRI when he finds out Candleton has a pacemaker, which would fail and most likely kill Candleton if he went in.

* AFormYouAreComfortableWith: Antubis, the anteater, is really the Egyptian god Anubis ([[ArtisticLicenseReligion Somewhere, an Egyptologist is crying]].) He looks like an anteater do to Mary's misunderstanding of his name. His form as Paul is Mary's belief that everyone has good inside of them, even Paul.