The Kingdom (miniseries)

Each episode of Riget and Riget II begins with the same prologue, detailing how the hospital, Rigshospitalet in Copenhagen, was built on the site of the "bleaching ponds", which recur in the name of the street of the hospital's official address, Blegdamsvej, although the exact significance of the reference is never explicitly discussed in the series.

The show begins with the admission of a spiritualist patient, Sigrid Drusse, who hears the sound of a girl crying in the elevator shaft. Upon investigation, Drusse discovers that the girl had died decades earlier, having been killed by her father to hide her illegitimacy. In order to put the spirit to rest, Drusse searches for the girl's body and ultimately finds it preserved in a specimen jar in the office of the hospital's professor of pathology, Professor Bondo (Baard Owe).

Meanwhile, neurosurgeon Stig Helmer, a recent appointee from Sweden to the neurosurgery department, tries to cover up his responsibility for a botched operation which left a young girl in a persistent vegetative state.

Pathologist Dr. Bondo attempts to convince the family of a man dying from liver cancer to donate his liver to the hospital for Bondo's research. (In fact, Bondo wants it as a trophy, as it is the second largest hepatosarcoma ever recorded.) When his request is denied, Bondo has the cancerous liver transplanted into his own body (as the patient signed an organ donor form), so that the cancer will become his personal property and can be kept within the hospital.

Amongst other plotlines, a young medical student becomes attracted to the nurse in charge of the sleep research laboratory, a ghostly ambulance appears and disappears every night, a junior doctor runs a black market in medical supplies, and a neurosurgeon discovers that she was impregnated by a ghost and that the baby in her womb is developing abnormally rapidly. In every episode, two dishwashers (each with Down syndrome) in the cellar discuss the strange happenings at Riget, and Stig Helmer screams his famous catchphrase: Danskjävlar (subtitled as "Danish scum", but literally "Danish devils").

• Ernst-Hugo Järegård – Stig Helmer
• Kirsten Rolffes – Sigrid Drusse
• Holger Juul Hansen – Einar Moesgaard
• Søren Pilmark – Jørgen 'Hook' Krogshøj
• Ghita Nørby – Rigmor Mortensen
• Jens Okking – Bulder Harly Drusse
• Otto Brandenburg – Hansen
• Annevig Schelde Ebbe – Mary Krüger
• Baard Owe – Palle Bondo
• Birgitte Raaberg – Judith Petersen
• Peter Mygind – Morten 'Mogge' Moesgaard
• Vita Jensen – Female dishwasher
• Morten Rotne Leffers – Male dishwasher
• Solbjørg Højfeldt – Camilla
• Udo Kier – Åge Krüger / Little Brother
• Birthe Neumann – Secretary to Moesgaard, later to Helmer
• Erik Wedersøe – Ole
• John Hahn-Petersen – Secretary Nivesen
• Henning Jensen – Director Bob
• Louise Fribo – Sanne Jeppesen
• Laura Christensen – Mona Jensen
• Vera Gebuhr – Gerda
• Ole Boisen – Christian
• Nis Bank-Mikkelsen – Priest
• Thomas Bo Larsen – The Falcon
• Henrik Koefoed – Radiologist
• Poul Hüttel – Steenbæk
• Helle Virkner – Emma Mogensen
• Stellan Skarsgård – The Swedish lawyer

American horror writer Stephen King developed a 13-episode mini-series based on Riget, under the title Stephen King's Kingdom Hospital, which was broadcast in 2004. The plot retained many of the elements of Riget, transferring the location of the hospital to Lewiston, Maine and placing it on the site of a mill built before the Civil War. Many of the characters derived their names from the Danish original (e.g., Sigrid Drusse became Sally Druse and Stig Helmer became Dr. Stegman). A significant difference in the American series was the introduction of a talking giant anteater character in the role of spirit guide/death/Anubis/Antubis.

• List of ghost films

• The Kingdom (1994) at AllMovie
• The Kingdom (1994) on IMDb
• The Kingdom (1994) at Rotten Tomatoes