Critic Reviews

To find a network drama that bears sustained comparison to ABC's Kingdom Hospital, you'd have to go all the way back to 1990, when the same network premiered David Lynch's "Twin Peaks." Alternately random and brilliant, the 15-hour, limited-run series "Kingdom Hospital" has a similarly indescribable vibe. Set in a huge Maine hospital, it plays like a cross of "M*A*S*H," "Six Feet Under" and "The Shining." King, his talented ensemble cast and his capable director, Craig R. Baxley, have created one of the creepiest locales in TV history. But they don't limit themselves to mere spookiness. They go wherever they please, and their brazen confidence demands that we follow along. [3 March 2004, p.39]

A juicy, jauntily anarchic production.

With a nice array of kooks, mad men, beasts and ghosts, we get the usual trail mix of King characters. Best of all, in a TV series we escape King’s biggest flaw – his refusal to self edit. Every movie turns into a miniseries when an hour would do just fine.

Kingdom Hospital is its own, slightly crazy thing. And in a world being overrun by the sleazoid zombie gremlins of reality TV, that's not all bad.

For ABC, Kingdom Hospital is a high-stakes experiment. It is meant to run for 13 episodes, just like an HBO series. It won't be back next season. You're meant to watch it now and admire its daring and imagination. There is much to admire but a lot of padding, too.

Its two-hour premiere is long on creepiness and somewhat short on plot development. But with the overemphasis of late on copycat reality, it's a welcome addition to primetime, indeed. [3 March 2004]

Leaving aside King's peculiar nostalgia for the Middle Ages, the two-hour premiere of Kingdom Hospital, though a little long on weird affectations and a little short on story line, establishes an appropriately spooky atmosphere at the hospital and deftly sketches its main characters. [3 March 2004, p.4E]

There are enough positive signs in the two-hour premiere that I'll probably take a look ... when the series moves to its regular time period.

If you sit through it, you're not going to be counting the hours until next week's episode.

The quietly disturbing, darkly comic masterpiece has been refashioned into something slick and stylized -- one that looks like Disney’s Haunted Mansion, but sounds like “Days of Our Lives.”