Dead Set puts the bite back into UK TV horror

Dead Set is proof that you don’t have to go to Pittsburgh to tell a great zombie tale. Savage, smart and absolutely thrilling, Charlie Brooker (Nathan Barley co-creator and Guardian writer) has brought high-octane horror back to British screens in a way that hasn’t been attempted since the Seventies/Eighties.

The DVD of the 5-part serial should be considered a must-own by genre fans.

Brooker has anchored his zombicalypse to the familiar world of Big Brother, and it comes complete with cameos from past reality show stars; the result is surprisingly powerful.

All three movies in George Romero’s original groundbreaking zombie movie trilogy are referenced, which seems appropriate as there’s a thread of social commentary underlying the gore. But make no mistake, this is no spoof. Dead Set is genuinely chilling and the realism of the violence will have your hair standing on end.

‘Because our set-up is so inherently comic - the Big Brother house – it’s actually probably best to play it quite straight,’ Brooker says. ‘So with our characters, nobody says, Oh, this is like a zombie film! or anything like that. It’s a world in which zombie films don’t exist, they don't call them zombies, they don’t really understand what they are and they’re very frightened. We’re hopefully genuinely frightening and very gory and quite bleak. And then on the other hand, because of the setting and because of some of the characters we’re not that straight-faced. So I hope that the tone sticks with people. You never know how these things will go down.’

In many ways, Dead Set reminds me of Robert Kirkman’s ongoing horror comic The Walking Dead, a graphic novel that continues to scream out for TV adaptation. Quite why it hasn’t been fast-tracked by the likes of Showtime Stateside baffles me. Perhaps E4 should snap up the rights and relocate it to the UK?

Fast running fiends
Brooker’s zombies aren’t classic shamblers. These are the fast-running fiends first introduced by Zack Synder in his remake of Dawn of the Dead. Indeed, this series could even be set in the same universe as Snyder’s, just located on the other side of the Atlantic. New here though is the unnerving death rattle they all make as they feed and stalk.

Not only is the script as sharp as the scissors used to despatch some of the show’s reanimated corpses, the cast is fresh and believable.

Jaime Winstone is memorable as the show’s runner Kelly, while Andy Nyman (a creative collaborator with Derren Brown) is astonishingly good as odious Big Brother producer Patrick.

The DVD features supplemental material for all five episodes. There are featurettes on the visual FX used through the show, interviews with Charlie Brooker, Davina McCall, director Yann Demange and others, a tour of the Big Brother house, plus some deleted or extended sequences.

The image, framed at 16:9, is a little odd; while sharp enough there’s a rather flat, limited colour palette which is clearly deliberate. The 5.1 mix is relatively unadventurous, although there’s some creepy use of the rears and an ominous LFE throughout. When Davina McDead bangs here head against one of the doors in frustration, the bass whump is truly chilling.

A different kind of BB
Interestingly, Dead Set wasn’t actually shot in a real BB household: ‘We hoped we would be able to use it at one point, but it became apparent that it simply wasn’t going to be feasible for all sorts of scheduling reasons and practical reasons,' explains Brooker.
'We had to build it at great expense in Chertsey, where they shoot Primeval. The art department did an amazing job. The thing about building a Big Brother house is it’s always different but it’s also somehow the same, so they had to create a house that instantly looks like Big Brother but also doesn’t look like a Big Brother. At the time we were building it, this year’s series hadn’t gone out, and we had no idea what they were gonna do, so we were also slightly wary. Like, we’ve put a big biodome greenhouse in the garden. Luckily, they didn’t do that this year!’

To read a longer interview with Charlie Brooker about Dead Set click here. Brooker reveals his favourite zombie films in issue 176 of SFX, on sale now.

Channel 4, R2 DVD, £20, On sale from November 3
HCC VERDICT: 5/5