The site was originally a dismal, caustic swamp. Now it's The Kingdom, a futuristic model of Danish health care. But the socialization of medicine has failed; the building and its inhabitants are crumbling, physically and psychically. These first four episodes of a Danish television series center around the ghost of a young girl, but director Lars von Trier has also populated the institution with a myriad of neurotic living characters who would be more at home in Twin Peaks than ER.

Susan Gale