King-dumb come: ABC's new Stephen King series disappoints.(Suburban Living)(TV/Radio)

0 Comments | Daily Herald (Arlington Heights, IL), March, 2004

Byline: Ted Cox "Stephen King's Kingdom Hospital" has a wonderful title sequence - eerie, evocative, haunting, faintly reminiscent of HBO's "Six Feet Under." Unfortunately, it's nothing but downhill from there. The horror writer trots out his usual assortment of freaks and geeks in this limited-run 15-hour series, which gets off to a two- hour start at 8 p.m.

Wednesday on ABC's WLS Channel 7. Bad as the characters are, the story is worse; it plods along at the stilted pace of King's worst TV work. No matter what you think of King's books, he can be surprisingly good on TV, as in the 1999 ABC miniseries "Storm of the Century." He can also, however, be very bad, as in the TV remake of "The Shining" and, even worse, the ABC miniseries "The Langoliers."...