''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.''