Borrowing liberally from the recent celluloid zombie uprising, Dead Set on E4 breathed life into Big Brother by adding copious helpings of death and undeath. With echoes of both Dawn and Shaun of the Dead, spatterings of 28 Days Later and a premise akin to films like Wrong Turn 2:Dead End and Reality Kills, Dead Set pits a new set of Big Brother contestants and some production staff against what appears to be the rest of the world.
It works at times, as set pieces are energetically filmed, gore flows well enough to feed the appetite of the horror hungry watchers and the end is… well, the end. The makers go down the same route as the classic zombie films, making social commentary in the context and hitting some nails squarely into the right heads. This manifests well in some of the ‘dumb’ comments of the contestants, the casual swearing and the bullying, whilst going over the top in other ways, such as the mad butcher scenes with the producer. The most horrific moment though has to be when said producer needs to relieve himself while trapped in a room with a squealing contestant, as a ravenous Davina McCall tries to butt her way through the locked door. Unpleasant on so many levels.
Ultimately Dead Set didn’t work as well as it could have. A longer lead up before zombification would have helped establish the characters at a more emotional level rather than the Big Brother stereotypes that were delivered and I can’t help but wonder just what the impact would have been if instead of presenting it as a drama straight off, the producers had played it as a straight reality show until the undead arrived. We could have had a War of the Worlds for the noughties.
Worth watching…if you’ve got the stomach for it!
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