I watched a couple of the episodes when it came on on ABC but was quite truly lost. Years later I have recorded all of them except that the Sci-Fi channel did not do it in order so I recorded the ones I could and then they just happened to get recorded again out of order (the 1st couple episodes then the 2 hour finale completely missing out the middle episodes) so they showed up today and I saw them. First of all watching just the 1st couple then the last makes for a crummy mini-series. I like Stephen King and all but I don't think he does that great of a job as far as adapting either his own novels or someone else's. (Lars Von Trier in this case) I also don't know what is so great about Craig R. Baxley except that for some reason Stephen King thinks he is the bomb. I will say he is competent, but not altogether very original or exciting to watch. So far he has done Stephen King's "Storm of the Century" (another dragged out mediocre mini-series) "Rose Red" (A good story wasted on TV) & last but not least "Kingdom Hospital." Enough about him but he should go back to being a 2nd unit director like he used to be on "The A-Team." Back to this mini-series, it had a great idea & I don't know how much was adapted & changed from the original series, but so much just didn't translate well. It went on way too long, this could have have had 1/2 of the episodes & it could have been tighter & not quite so draggy. There were also too many pointless characters that not only wasted space, they took up a large amount of unnecessary screen time. I will say that Jack Coleman (Claire's Dad from the show "Heroes") is excellent in his almost stationary role as he conveys a wide range of emotions as well as some excellent narrations while being completely immobile much of his screen time. I have a feeling this could have been the role that got him the role he has now as I can honestly say almost any lesser actor could've/would've wasted this very challenging yet the most rewarding character of anyone on this pretty weak mini-series. I very much liked the little girl ("Silent Hill") as she has the creepy yet love-able routine down pat. The ant-eater was a cool character that sometimes looked good, but most of the time looked pretty lame. I realize the budget was probably little, but there is such a thing as less is more a la the 1st "Alien" movie. So if you are interested in this, I would suggest watching every other episode and you probably will understand it just as well. The best episode is probably the last which is a 2 hour finale. (1 hour 20 mins w/o commercials) It wraps up just about every plot & sub-plot. The music is some of the worst, in the worst places you can imagine. In fact, it detracts terribly in some of the sequences. There is a good scene w/some music (the criminal being brought in) which is funny as hell, yet seems really out of place at the same time. I do have to give props to the always good Oscar nominated Bruce Davison who is most famous for playing the senator in the X-Men movies. He does an admirable job of slowly going Crazy, although it was dragged out to much there too. So overall give this a try but I sure would like to see the original so I could see what I'm missing as it is rated 8.7/10.
Review of Kingdom Hospital
