Why ABC Cancelled Stephen King’s Kingdom Hospital After One Season

Given that he’s one of the most popular novelists in the history of American literature, it’s not surprising that the novels and short stories of Stephen King have been adapted for film and television myriad times since the publication of his first book, “Carrie,” in 1974. Obviously, we’re all well aware of the many great movies that have been spawned by his work as well as the disasters, but these adaptations are so plentiful that it’s easy to forget some of the merely meh-to-good ones that exist. 

Yes, there was a big studio rendition of “Hearts of Atlantis” starring Anthony Hopkins and a young Anton Yelchin, and, no, you didn’t imagine “The Night Flier” or “Mercy.” The television adaptations are particularly easy to forget because, well, most of them are utterly, aggressively forgettable. A “Rose Red” miniseries really happened, and “Desperation” actually was turned into a TV movie. With depressingly few exceptions, television hasn’t done well by King. Even when King himself has been involved (e.g. on the CBS All Access version of “The Stand”), the results have tended to be underwhelming at best. 

Hence, you can’t blame the author for trying to shake things up by adapting someone else’s work for a change — which King did in 2004 with “Kingdom Hospital.” Based on the horror miniseries “The Kingdom,” which Lars von Trier created for Danish television in 1994 (and which spawned sequel series in 1997 and 2022), it was originally intended to be a miniseries itself. But King saw potential in the material for an ongoing series, and ABC was likely interested as well when the show’s premiere delivered the network the highest ratings for a drama debut that season.

If you’re struggling to remember what happened on the series like I am, you probably don’t recall why that second season never came to fruition. The answer will not surprise you.

Though King told The New York Times in 2004 that “Kingdom Hospital” was “the thing I like best out of all the things I’ve done,” viewers apparently didn’t agree. The series’ ratings fell off a cliff after the premiere, and it lacked the critical support required to get ABC thinking a second season might be worthwhile.

My memory of the series is that it was long on setup and short on delivery. This is a shame because the medical procedural is a popular genre on American television, and, thus, rife with potential if you come at it from an odd perspective. Setting a series in a haunted hospital populated with a staff that belongs to a secret society seemed like a winning idea (after all, von Trier worked wonders with it), but the show just couldn’t get its hooks into you. Even with a dynamite cast that featured Bruce Davison, Ed Begley Jr. (a hospital-show veteran given his work on “St. Elsewhere”), and Diane Ladd, the series remained disappointingly insipid.

King had a plan for a second season, and his die-hard fans lobbied on the series’ behalf, but without critical support (the show sports a below-average Metacritic score of 47), there simply wasn’t a chance that ABC would support what also happened to be a fairly expensive show. Considering that every episode was directed by Craig R. Baxley, the underrated action filmmaker responsible for “Action Jackson” (one of /Film’s 101 Best Action Movies Ever) and “Stone Cold,” no one wanted this series to work more than I did. It just wasn’t in the cards. And now you can go back to forgetting “Kingdom Hospital” ever existed again.