Made in four parts for Danish television, this surreal melodrama exposes the inner workings of a modern teaching hospital in dangerous decline. The main theme is the arrogance and self-protection of the medical profession, symbolized by the lodge, and its persistent denial of the spiritual.

Every character is flawed: the astute Dr. Hook extracts cocaine from outdated topical solutions; an otherwise likable anesthetist is drawn to Helmer and destroys her reports to protect him; the respected researcher abuses a legal loophole to get around a family's wishes; the well-intentioned, but thick director invents "Operation Morning Air," a woefully inadequate attempt to improve service through pathetic encounter groups. Like a Greek chorus, the kitchen workers, played by a man and a woman with trisomy-21, are the only people who understand the full extent of the hospital's ailing condition.

With gothic and at times even Shakespearean humor, the series is reminiscent of American television's Twin Peaks, while the lavish attention to gore evokes the inscrutable products of director David Cronenberg. Some (like this reviewer) will find the series to be a hilarious, biting satire of modern medicine; others (like her family) would say it is merely a gruesome soap made by people who do not like doctors.