Dan­ish Scum! Wel­come to Lars von Trier’s The Kingdom

With Christ­mas in our sights, it’s worth not­ing that Lars von Tri­er is offer­ing us his own spiky bauble to hang atop the tree with a new TV series. It’s a very belat­ed con­tin­u­a­tion of one his most beloved ear­ly works: the phan­tas­magoric, hos­pi­tal-based com­e­dy-hor­ror hybrid, The King­dom. The King­dom Exo­dus pre­miered to plau­dits at the 2022 Venice Film Fes­ti­val, where many believed that the film­mak­er man­aged to deft­ly recap­ture the earnest­ly iron­ic spir­it of the orig­i­nal run.

The first of five episodes arrive on MUBI on 27 Novem­ber (with the grand finale arriv­ing in our stock­ing on Yule­tide morn!), and LWLies read­ers can now claim a 30-day tri­al to watch The King­dom Exo­dus and the new­ly remas­tered The King­dom I and II. Let’s take a quick jour­ney back to the go-go ​’90s to explore the ori­gins of this icon­ic serial.

Ear­ly in his career, von Tri­er casu­al­ly set his stall as one of the most excit­ing and inno­v­a­tive young film­mak­ers on the plan­et. His ​“Europa” tril­o­gy, which con­sists of 1984’s The Ele­ment of Crime, 1987’s Epi­dem­ic and 1991’s Europa, was laud­ed for its maker’s beyond-his-years skill and preter­nat­ur­al under­stand­ing the ins and outs of visu­al sto­ry­telling, but von Tri­er him­self dis­played an imp­ish annoy­ance that none of his films net­ted him the big prize at the Cannes Film Festival.

And so he shift­ed to tele­vi­sion as a way to make some fast cash for the new­ly-mint­ed pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny, Zen­tropa, that he and his pro­duc­tion part­ner Peter Aal­bæk Jensen had found­ed after mak­ing Europa, chiefly as a way to expand cre­ative con­trol over their work. If, indeed, The King­dom was made for rea­sons that weren’t entire­ly artis­tic, it goes some way to demon­strate von Trier’s apti­tude for impos­ing his sin­gu­lar sen­si­bil­i­ty on a range of artis­tic forms. In short: it def­i­nite­ly doesn’t look or play like a cash-in. Quite the oppo­site in fact.

Von Tri­er him­self sold the series as his ver­sion of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks, and the many styl­is­tic and tonal over­laps between the two would sug­gest that this wasn’t just one of the director’s famous pub­lic­i­ty stunts. The sto­ry takes place in Copehangen’s Rigshos­pi­talet which trans­lates as The Kingdom’s Hos­pi­tal (and is often short­ened to Riget). As with Twin Peaks, The King­dom offers a wry, often fond satire of its cheesy genre for­bear (in this case, hor­ror seri­als and hos­pi­tal dra­mas), while com­mit­ting ful­ly to the sto­ry, char­ac­ters and episod­ic struc­ture, to the extent that it main­tains a com­pelling grip on the viewer’s atten­tion and oper­ates as a work that can and should be tak­en seriously.

The machi­na­tions all revolve around a mas­sive ensem­ble, though boiled down there are three key pro­tag­o­nists: Kirsten Rolffes’ Sigrid Drusse, a Miss Marple-type ​“lit­tle old lady” who pos­sess­es the pow­ers of a spir­i­tu­al medi­um, and is seen invent­ing ail­ments for her­self in order to inves­ti­gate the sound of a cry­ing child she hears in a lift; then there’s Søren Pilmark’s Krogshøj, the sly­ly con­fi­dent under­ling sur­geon who feigns igno­rance while qui­et­ly amass­ing one-ups on his hate­ful col­leagues; and, final­ly, there’s Ernst-Hugo Järegård as the Swedish atten­dant brain sur­geon, Stig Helmer, one of the less­er-known icons of ​’90s TV and a brash, enti­tled bad­die up there with the best of them.

At the begin­ning of each episode, we see vari­a­tions of Helmer rolling up to the hos­pi­tal in his red Vol­vo (of course!) and jim­my­ing off his hub­caps so they’re not nicked by a group of maraud­ing youths. Then, anoth­er trade­mark comes at the end of each episode, as Helmer is giv­en an enraged solil­o­quy which he deliv­ers on the roof in sea­son one and direct­ly into a toi­let bowl in sea­son two, and each time he wraps things up by yelling, ​“Dan­ish scum!” – a reflec­tion of his belief that he’s den­i­grat­ing him­self as a no-non­sense and offi­cious Swede work­ing in Copen­hagen. When it arrives, it’s always hilarious.

In the same way as Lynch made Twin Peaks as a tumult of ques­tions with­out answers, so too does von Tri­er clev­er­ly extend his plot­lines in a range of weird and won­der­ful ways that always tan­ta­lis­ing­ly delays the pos­si­bil­i­ty of res­o­lu­tion. Hav­ing been away from Riget for nigh-on 25 years, von Tri­er has opt­ed to return to its ghost­ly (but, for him, sooth­ing) hall­ways for this third sea­son which was always moot­ed, but was put on ice when Rolffes and Järegård died before pro­duc­tion could begin. The sto­ry picks up where things left off, with many of the key cast return­ing for more and var­i­ous long-tail nar­ra­tive pay­offs final­ly achieved. And fans of the bril­liant­ly awful Stig Helmer can be sat­ed by know­ing that his son turns up to pick up the baton.

The King­dom Exo­dus launch­es exclu­sive­ly on MUBI on 27 Novem­ber, with new episodes drop­ping weekly.

Our read­ers can enjoy 30-day tri­als to watch The King­dom Exo­dus and the new­ly remas­tered The King­dom I and II on MUBI. Click here for more details.