Two Kingdoms, Two Kings

This article provides comparative analysis of two contemporary television dramas: Danish miniseries Riget (tr. The Kingdom, 1994) and Stephen King's Kingdom Hospital (2004). Whereas the title Riget suggests the older nation-state of Denmark, there is another form of cultural imperialism at play in Kingdom Hospital: the global power and position of the US entertainment industry. While Kingdom Hospital first appears to abandon the distinctively local considerations of Lars von Trier's Riget, to become global in its concerns and appeal, fresh considerations of the US production under Stephen King from distinct cultural and philosophical perspectives – with particular reference to Ralph Waldo Emerson and American Transcendentalism – reveal the later serial's complex interrogation of national concerns