Zombie Nation – Dead Set on E4
Monday, October 27th, 2008
Everyone who watches Big Brother is a drooling, brainless shuffling dimwit; that’s the premise of the new horror-thriller series Dead Set, showing all this week on E4. A zombie plague has gripped the country, and the only survivors are thought to be the cast and the crew of the Big Brother house, the usual bunch of nicely dressed, vain, pretentious, egocentric toss pitches (one character doesn’t believe that toes have bones).
Jamie Winstone (pictured) leads the cast, as TV runner Kelly, who survives the initial zombie onslaught, and then desperately tries to warn the housemates of the threat outside – of course, being Big Brother housemates, they all think it’s a wind up or some sort of task set by the production team.
Delivered from the pen of Nathan Barley and Screenwipe writer Charlie Brooker, Dead Set could have easily been a none-too-subtle satirical send up on the nature of reality TV (which is sort of is) but its more of a straight-up zombie action-packed brain-fest, or as Brooker himself says “ashamedly populist zombie-horror thriller” – there’s fake blood and plenty of it, and the gory bits are queasingly realistic.
Of particular note is Davina McCall’s spirited sending up of herself; later she re emerges as a red-mawed, white-eyed brain hungry zombie in a brilliant cameo. Dead Set kicks off tonight with an hour-long pilot, and is set to run every weekday night this week in half hour instalments (coincidentally ending this Friday - it’s Hallowe’en innit?), and makes for, ahem, a bloody good watch.
