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The beginning credit sequences of the episodes of both series are the same and fairly encapsulate both what is appealing and novel about the series and why, in my final analysis, I think Riget and Riget II remain faintly overrated (The complete series placed 49th in the original BOP list of the 50 Best Horror Films of All Time.) As Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide succinctly observes “The unusual look of the film (a brownish dirty-looking print texture) was achieved by shooting on 16mm, transferring to video, editing on video, transferring back to 16mm and blowing up to 35mm.”

The first half of the opening credits is among the most stunning of any randomly selected 60 to 90 seconds of footage in the entire ten-hour series. A deep, chilly voice (the perfectly named bass-baritone opera singer Ulrik Cold) provides the back history of the grounds on which Riget was built. One of the images accompanying this - an exquisite shot of water being wrung out of a sheet - is so tactile and visceral you may feel compelled to duck or attempt to wipe the condensation off your viewing screen. This atmospheric mini-film ends with the title etched on a piece of wood and an homage to a key image from The Shining. No explanation is ever given for how this ties in, if at all, to the supernatural events about to unfold. Perhaps the concluding episodes would have provided some answers. Perhaps not. Final analysis: Creepy, dreamy, and hypnotic.

Then the second half with the actors’ names kicks in. Driven by a pounding techno number apparently titled “The Seizure”, the footage, all pulled from random show episodes hits the eyes like the strobe lights at an Ibiza disco hot spot, and aims to induce just what the title says. Final analysis: Chaotic, jumbled, and flippant, but it’s got a beat and you can dance to it.

Riget and Riget II are, first and foremost, soap operas of the medical variety, with all of the plot intrigues, illicit romances, and arrogant professionals that this implies. Von Trier plays all of these moments utterly straight. One’s first inclination might be to label them as parodies or heavy-handed satires but I don’t think that’s the intent. By grounding his show in the ordinary “reality” of the clichés of medical dramas and soap opera romances, von Trier paradoxically allows himself to more easily veer off into a carefully focused, but no less potent, escalating insanity. The characters are no deeper than a brief character synopsis might suggest, with very little in the way of back story. They are also completely acted on by the plot, warm and compassionate when required, cold, clinical and/or zombified as needed.

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