Series Review: Dead Set

On Friday I watched the 2008 Zombie/Big Brother mini-series, Dead Set with my wife and our friend Ron. As Ron had seen both series 10 and 11 of BIg Brother UK, and I've seen a whole lot of zombie apocalypse films it seemed like a good idea.

The set up is pretty simple, during a fictional season of the british version of Big Brother (a reality show in which contestants are forced to live in a house without outside contact for a few months wherein every move they make can be viewed by the home audience) a zombie outbreak occurs and as the house is set up to keep the outside world away from the contestants, that is exactly what happens - they continue to live their reality-tv life completely unaware that the world beyond them has effectively ended.

The series played with the cultural fascination with these types of shows and did a very effective job of keeping true to both its reality TV and zombie roots (I'll have to take Ron's word for the Big Brother stuff, as I've never seen the series before). The show mostly focues on a production assistant (played by Jaime Winstone, pictured right) and her boyfriend (who was away from the house when the s#*t hit the fan, but does feature many of the contestants in strong supporting roles.

In the end the series was fun - I'm not sure if I'd purchase it (although right now I can't as it's not available in Region One format), and I would definitely warn people against the gore (it was significantly more than I was expecting on regular television.) For fans of Reality TV and Zombie flicks, however, it would definitely be right up your alley.