Dead Set Review

The zombie apocalypse is upon us, a mindless nation of meat is fed a diet of crap TV.  A diet with zero nutrition, a mere distraction from the real world, a new religion to placate the masses and keep everyone in line, happy consumers with simpler dreams and minimal ambition…

The popular consumer culture that was satirised so well in 1978 in Dawn of the Dead has provided the framework for a million zombie flicks since and in Dead Set it is updated to take a stab at that most vile of TV productions Big Brother.  Of course setting your zombie tale within the Big Brother house means that we viewers have to suffer the kind of people that appear on the Big Brother program.  Now perhaps elsewhere in the world Big Brother attracts reasonable people with some mildly perverse idea that it could be an interesting experiment (I suspect not), but in the UK the viewing public demands it be populated with the most irritating, nymphomaniac, fame-starved, wannabees our wee island can produce.  An interesting challenge for Dead Set to take care of.

Needless to say that first episode where we are introduced to the range of characters was heavy going, an hour of these people is portrayed in very accurate fashion.  We have the ludicrously camp cross dressing nurse, the big-breasted bimbo, the manly beefcake, and the clinically depressed cynic.  Thankfully they’re balanced by their polar opposites from the outside, Kelly the pragmatic every-girl who starts the program as a runner for the show and the impressively abrasive producer Patrick.  When the zombies start to appear the characters quickly find that the house is actually quite secure but the program never really slows down.  After the first hour long episode the next four were a mere 25 minutes long each.

In an attempt to keep the program moving quickly and keep each episode interesting this makes for very little time to get to know the characters any further.  Once it becomes apparent the cameras are off for the housemates, they indeed shed their acts and become much more human.  Jaime Winstone playing Kelly becomes the core of the group as the only one from the outside that knows what’s going on.  The clueless housemates merely become assistants to her survival plan.  Meanwhile Patrick is trapped with one of the more irritating housemates within the studio.

When DV’s Kurtodrome mentioned on the boards this program was written by Charlie Brooker an array of dots were connected for me.  My main contact with him has been his Screenwipes program, a half hour show in which he tears the previous weeks TV to pieces, but he also was a writer for the Eleven O’Clock Show and Brass Eye.  His acerbic sarcastic style seemingly dominates anything he touches.  Indeed Patrick embodies that contempt for a popular culture he depends on.  Brooker’s target is not just BB contestants, viewers, and the people that make the programs but also to show the utter contempt with which those in the industry hold the viewing cattle, I mean population.

Despite a couple of lifts from 28 Days Later (these are the fast moving zombie variety) and Dawn the show actually has some original twists mostly facilitated by the ever present evil self centred character of Patrick.  It’s unfortunate that the half hour format limited it so much.  While the initial episode dwelled a little long for comfort on the most irritating facets of the housemates the later episodes were too driven to fit in at least one scene of action in each part.  And that’s what unfortunately the show is, all action.  There are few scares but plenty of gore, swearing, shouting, and running.  28 Days Later may be the only one so far to get away with fast zombies and keep them scary, possibly by making sure there were very few of them.  I do wish future film makers would take note of the scare factor in the slow zombies, the ominous inevitability.

Oh course having said that this is by far the most interesting British TV drama I’ve seen in a long time, a zombie gift one friend called it.  It would also be unfair not to mention a spectacular finale that virtually saves the whole shebang, leaving me one pretty happy consumer.

6.5/10

For those of you who missed it, the DVD release was available as of Monday 3rd November.