This is not genius, this is the direct opposite of genius, and I'm actually stunned by some of the comments this series got. I've read most of King's books. He's not a bad author, but a movie maker he's not. Von Trier's Riget was a masterpiece, and you'd think that a remake which rips off most of the dialogue and plot would be at least decent without too much effort. Wrong. The acting is poor, and actors poorly chosen- all actors either look like models or are meant to come across as idiots. Dr. Stegman (Stig) is not nearly as evil and cynical as he was made out to be in the original series, and there are some very obvious attempts to live off the past popularity of twin-peaks. The humor of the original is lost in King's remake, which is too bad since it was the humor and not the ghost story that made the original so great to begin with. <br /><br />I never expected anyone to fill Ernst-Hugo's shoes, but at least King could have tried to give some kind of personality apart from tedious stereotypes to his characters. <br /><br />Even if you don't compare this series with the original, you still end up with a series for the masses, filled with oversimplified characters, jokes that aren't funny (the talking dog- OMFG), poor acting, and a way of telling the story that's insulting to the audience's intelligence. This series was made for making money. And that's okay, as long as you're open with the fact that that was the only purpose. But there's absolutely nothing genius about it.