After a 25-year hiatus, the third series of Danish film director Lars von Trier’s medical comedy-horror, The Kingdom, has made its much-anticipated return to TV.
Given its barmy premise (it’s about a very strange hospital and its eccentric staff and patients), the recent medical diagnosis of its often controversial director (in August Von Trier’s production company, Zentropa, announced that he had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s), and the series’ two-decades-late release, it made sense that the show made waves when it debuted on Mubi in November.
But if you’re new to Von Trier, or you haven’t caught up with The Kingdom Exodus yet, here’s everything there is to know about his new five-episode final series.
What is The Kingdom about?
The show takes place in Copenhagen’s leading hospital Rigshospitalet, informally referred to as Riget (translated to “realm”) which is home to a group of wacky doctors who treat illnesses just as bizarre as they are. The haunting series explores both good and evil with an anarchic sequence of events.
The first episode begins with patient Sigrid Drusse (Kirsten Rolffes) who is repeatedly admitted after claiming she can hear the sound of a dead girl’s cries in the hospital’s elevator shaft. The intrigue continues as we follow Dr Stig Helmer (Ernst-Hugo Järegård), a Swedish neurosurgeon with a short temper and a compulsion to prove his country’s superiority over his drab Danish colleagues.
Drusse’s repeated eerie claims, coupled with a student’s obsession with an older nurse and a ghost haunting the hospital after dark, create a chilling mystery that slowly unravels over the course of the series.
Who is in the cast?
The final season sees several of the Nineties’ original cast members reunited in bringing the cult classic to a conclusion.
The cast of the long-awaited return of The Kingdom includes Peter Mygind (of Borgen and Last Christmas fame), Mikael Persbrandt (In A Better World), renowned Danish actress Ghita Nørby (Silent Heart) and Lars Mikkelsen (House of Cards).
What did the critics say?
Since its anticipated premiere last month, The Kingdom Exodus has received a number of rave reviews from critics.
From the Guardian’s impression of “satisfying wildness and weirdness” to The British Film Institutes’ description of a “madly entertaining horror,” the final series has been a bit of a hit.
Lauded for its lighthearted and even funny take on a gruesomely dark hospital, Von Trier has been highly praised for creating an usually fun experience for viewers.
Who is Lars von Trier?
The film director and screenwriter has a career spanning over four decades, with a number of highly-acclaimed films to his name. These include the experimental film trilogy Europa, 2011’s Melancholia, which starred Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg, and the two-part erotic film Nymphomaniac, which was released in 2013 and also starred Gainsbourg alongside Stellan Skarsgård, Stacy Martin and Shia LaBeouf.
One of his most notable works is the 2003 avant-garde drama film Dogville starring Nicole Kidman, about a woman on the run from criminals who tries to make a new start in the small conservative town of Dogville, Colorado.
In the early years of his career, Von Trier formed his production company Zentropa with partner Peter Alabæk Jensen. Finding himself keen to make his mark in his native Denmark, Von Trier began writing a new television miniseries.
First broadcast in 1994, the first season of The Kingdom (titled Riget), was so well received that the second series, Riget II, shortly followed in 1997. After the success of the first two seasons, Von Trier had his heart set on making another but after lead actor Järegård’s death in 1998, the project was put on hold indefinitely.
To the satisfaction of many fans, Von Trier announced in December 2020 that he would be bringing The Kingdom back. Now, 25 years on from the original, all the ghosts, ghouls and bloodshed concludes in the five-episode final series The Kingdom Exodus.
As filming for The Kingdom Exodus began, Von Trier was hit with his own medical challenges after being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. In an interview with The New Yorker, Von Trier spoke of his difficulties directing the series with his crippling symptoms. “I felt terrible, because I had this diease, and I didn’t know that I had it at the time,” he recalled.
Following his diagnosis, Von Trier decided to subtlely reference his condition in the show with a poignant image of his shoes cleverly obstructed by a piece of fabric: a touching tribute to Von Trier’s appearances in the original two series. In both The Kingdom Riget and Riget II, the director appears in a tuxedo before the end credits offering viewers a recap of each episode. Von Trier reprises this role in The Kingdom Exodus but instead from behind a curtain, with only his shoes visible on screen, in an attempt to display his “vanity.”
What else you should know
The cult series was released on Danish public TV in 1994, but remained largely unknown overseas until Von Trier himself became more widely recognised. However, the series proved vital to the development of two other hospital shows. Both the paranormal series All Souls by Stuart Gillard and Stephen Tolkin and none other than Stephen King’s Kingdom Hospital were directly adapted from Lars von Trier’s work.
All Souls, set in a ghostly teaching hospital with a disturbing past and Kingdom Hospital, which revolves around a villainous brain surgeon, are both heavily inspired by the eccentric goings-on at Rigshospitalet.
