Dead Set

Where would you like to be when the zombie apocalypse hits? Would you want to be hanging out in an abandoned farm-house? A suburban shopping mall? Or an underground military facility? Probably the last place I would want to be at the best of times is the Big Brother house, forced to live with a variety of wannabe-celebs while each of my words and actions were monitored by the world at large.

Imprisoned with these unappealing people while outside is being eaten by hungry zombies is even less appealing. However, this is the premise of ‘Dead Set’; an E4 mini-series for Halloween that mashes-up the zombie genre with reality tv.

‘Dead Set’ is a brilliant premise not least because the Big Brother contestants are effectively cocooned from contact with from the outside world during their stay. By fusing together the zombie genre with reality television, there is considerable scope for social commentary and for gentle mocking of shows like BB.

While the five-part series had its moments – especially in the form of the zombie Davina – ultimately the series could not fulfil the expectations of its concept. Characterisation was weak (with the exception of the particularly odious moustached producer Patrick); the horror was deritative with too many nods to other (better) movies;  the pacing was flat and the plotting mediocre.

When I was watching it, I had this nagging feeling that they took the lazy option. While there was an undercurrent of media satire (people watching Big Brother are zombies) it wasn’t strong enough. Why bother set the progamme in the Big Brother house if they didn’t use it more – the characters could have stayed in the set as a relatively safe option for an extended period of time (as in ‘Dawn of the Dead’) while outside the world descended into chaos. The mundane actions of the contestants would have been highlighted even more if they were in there for weeks as opposed to days. This would have allowed more interesting scenarios such as viewers determined to watch Big Brother even though there were zombies outside, or  zombies sitting on the sofa watching/wanting to eat the Big Brother contestents? Alternatively, they could have made more of the zombies-as- contestants analogy, although considering the programme was made with the full backing of BB, this was probably unlikely to be realised.

While ‘Dead Set’ was enjoyable it certainly wasn’t ground-breaking and considering the potential of the concept, it should have been better. However, it is interesting that after ‘Shaun of the Dead’, zombie apocalypses are becoming increasingly mainstream and I wouldn’t be surprised if there were more zombie mashups to come.