Kingdom Hospital ongoing thread (renamed) (1 Viewer)

[Jordan_E]

The only thing I remember from the original were the two "Greek Chorus"-types in the dishwashing room. It wasn't that bad, better than some of the drek on right now, and I'll keep watching simply because there isn't enough weirdness on TV for me, and I'm not in the whole Angel/Buffy scene. Not great, but it might get better.

 

[SarahG]

Intersting..I liked it...but in general I like stephen king...i am going to watch it next week as well....maybe those that didn't like should give the story some time to get going..this was all just IMO, setting it up, ya know.

 

[TheLongshot]

It is going to be hard for me to continue, since it seems to be competeing against Law & Order. There just wasn't enough promise in the two hours I saw to give up on L&O. Too much wierdness for wierdness sake.

Jason

 

[Ronn.W]

Danish Kingdom DVD is available R1 as well. It's a Canadian release, much better subtitles than any of the asian DVD's.
http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/ASI...699047-2075242

 

[todd s]

It was a little slow. But, I guess it has to have another 13 episodes to explain all. I still liked All Souls better.

 

[ChuckSolo]

Here's my take:

Pluses:

Excellent cast
Great HD presentation
Good FX

Minuses:

Plot taking too long to develop
cartoonish characters
commercial breaks waayyyy to long
NO frights in part 1

One thing I noticed on the Cox Digital Cable feed was that the audio appeard to be broadcast in Dolby Digital Stereo! I got almost NO LFE response and my center and surround channels were not active at all. The only sound I got from the show itself was from my two front mains. Some of the commercials kicked in DD PLII though. Weird to say the least, that's ABC for ya. I may give it a look for a couple of more weeks since sometimes even King's novels take a bit to become meaty.

 

[todd s]

Chuck, You are so right. Their was way to many commercial breaks. And how many times to I need to see the preview for D.A.? Makes me not want to watch that show now.

 

[Ralph Summa]

I've been reading King for 20 years and I was really disappointed with this. Were there talking anteaters and dogs in the original? WTF? Cheesy...

I will give it a few more episodes before I give up on it just because it's SK. I just hope I don't end up feeling like I did after Rose Red and Storm of the Century.

 

[Ronn.W]

If you've been reading King for 20 years, you already know the answer to that one! Those are of course his own creations. The man has started to cheese out big time in the last few years.

 

[ChuckSolo]

Typical about the cheesing out thing. The guy is so filthy rich he no longer needs to be fresh and new. Personally, I quit reading his stuff seriously after "Insomnia" and just read the first few chapters of his new books.To me he got too repetitious. "Dreamcatcher" might as well have been "It" what with the kids and all. Others were just too boring; "Hearts in Atlantis" comes to mind on the boring scale. I give everything a chance, but if it doesn't catch my attention, I won't bother. I read the first three "Darktower/Gunslinger" books and just felt they were too disjointed in the story telling. I will give "Kingdom Hospital" one more go and if it doesn't get any better, I won't bother with it. Maybe it's time for his retirement, or at least a 10 year hiatus.

 

[Mike Graham]

I've always heard King complain about his experiences adapting his work for the big screen, including working with screenwriters on The Dead Zone and Stanley Kubrick onThe Shining.

However, whenever King has full creative control, its just terrible. Miniseries of The Stand, The Shining, Storm of the Century, and Rose Red were nothing but disappointments.

I tuned in last night, hoping for something entertaining. Instead, a thinly stretched plot and weak characters presented themselves. How long did it take Bruce Davidson to leave the parking lot and get into the damn hospital? The huge amount of cheap CGI involved did nothing to help the show either.

 

[Rex Bachmann]

Todd s wrote (post #1):



BIG DIFFERENCE! All Souls = genuinely creepy. Kingdom Hospital = borrrring! NOT SCARY AT ALL! And that evil ant-eater . . . . .

 

[Garrett Adams]

Same here. No Dolby Digital on OTA or Comcast cable.

 

[TonyD]

this was not broadcast with dd 5.1 by abc.

i read on another board that a local abc station somewere converts everything to 5.1.
so if you had 5.1 for kh then your station converts to it.

 

[David_Blackwell]

Yep, the thing I remember most from watching KH is the ant eater. The 2 hour episode amounted to something that could have been edited down to 1 1/2 or even 1 hour and you wouldn't even miss anything in the plot. I'll watch more episodes of KH since Enterprise and L&O are repeats, but I rather have new Enterprise or have ABC bring MIRACLES back (and show the 7 episodes they never aired where Canada aired all of them and the UK is currently airing Miracles).

Be SeeIng you,
David Blackwell

 

[Steve Schaffer]

that would be KFSN 30.1 in Fresno, CA--our local ABC affilliate upconverts everything on it's HD feed to 5.1, and while it's not as effective as true 5.1 on some ABC shows it's overally quite good. Never had a problem with missing center channel or anything else, and they almost never fall asleep at the HD/SD switch.

I loved The Stand miniseries and consider it the best King adaptation ever done--helps that it's my favorite of his books also. I also liked Rose Red very much.

Kingdom Hospital is actually a 15 hour miniseries, what we saw last night was actually 2 eps shown back to back and was not intended to be a 2 hour ep, which may account for the plethora of commercials.

Since it is a 15 hour story and not 15 self-contained episodes of a series, I think we need to realize that what we saw last night was mostly just setting us up for later stuff. It's a bit slow so far but I like this approach better than a lot of awkward exposition.

Definitely seems very much influenced by Lynch's Twin Peaks, which was not everyone's cup of tea. I'm sure we'll figure out what the anteater thing is all about later on. Just wish KFSN could get closed captionning working on the HD feed, as I had some difficulty understanding the Greek Chorus.

 

[Malcolm R]

Me too. Is there a reason those characters need to be "special needs" actors? If they're supposed to be imparting some sort of important info about the story, it would help to be able to understand them.

 

[John Berggren]

Oops. I completely forgot this was on. Will ABC be doing a rebroadcast this week?

 

[LarryDavenport]

I forgot to waatch, but the "Special needs" characters were in the original version of The Kingdom, so at least he's sticking to some of the original story.

 

[todd stone]

wow this was AWFUL. I won't be returning to the tube for this garbage