Dead Set
E4
"Big Brother House - this is Davina!"
Yes, those of you who find those words scary enough will probably find plenty to enjoy in this horror set in the Big Brother house. Ever wanted to see those smug, myopic sun-worshippers have their cider-guzzling faces smashed in? Check. Think they all deserve a grizzly death after taking up all that air time every summer with their inanity? Check. Want to see Davina herself come to some kind of unpleasant end? Well... you might...
But what lifts this show above the "ooh, we're a nation of zombies for watching Big Brother all the time" level of debate, is that there's a real affection for the actual show itself as well - so if you're a BB fan then there's plenty to enjoy here too. Stacks of former contestants hanging out in the BBLB green room (Makosi, Ziggy, Bubble, Kinga etc - is being a zombie the new Z-list?), behind-the-scenes footage of the production team shouting at each other and living off styrofoam coffee, slagging off the housemates from behind the mirrors, sleazing on the juniour members of the team and then stepping in for some "voice of God" time when things are getting out of hand. And yes, Davina's really in it, lending the whole show the reality it needs to spiral out of.
Horror geeks will get off on the genre touches - Ginger Snaps and Manchester Morgue are just two culty references dropped into the script; Big Brother aficionados will warm to a show that plays out like a behind-the-scenes show, with the added bonus of some BBLB team-ups from housemates from different series.
By shooting the series in a pretty accurate recreation of the actual BB house (the real one was being prepped for BB9), there's none of that sinking feeling that the set doesn't look quite right that you get with so many shows on British TV; it looks exactly as it should because we're used to seeing people running around its artificial living room. Strangely, adding in the odd zombie doesn't detract from this. In a way it's the perfect modern set-up for a group of people who wouldn't know what was going on in the outside world, which writer Charlie Brooker seems acutely aware of. Also, it uses the conventions of the zombie genre effectively because you've actually got a ready-built group of people who have been put together precisely because they probably won't get along - and now they're being forced into a genuine life-or-death team-work situation after weeks of bitching and moaning at each other for eating the last egg...
Decent cast, including Jaime Winstone, Kevin Eldon, Riz Ahmad; artful direction; speedy modern zombies; lots of fast-paced gore. If the rest of the series is as tight as the first episode, this could be the first decent drama Britain's produced for ages that didn't involve some repressed people in bonnets slowly romancing each other while reading poetry in a parlour, or a bunch of middle class people divorcing each other and then uncovering a twenty year old crime in their back gardens coming back to haunt them.
And yes, zombie Davina - that's got to be one of the classic moments of the year.
Links
Tags
9th Oct 2008 - Tumblr
4