Hi, I'm fairly new to Ciao, and hope that I can be of help. I aim to be as honest as i can be, and ...
Hi, I'm fairly new to Ciao, and hope that I can be of help. I aim to be as honest as i can be, and to write something that might be somewhat informative beyond simple "I Like / I Hate". I post on dooyoo.co.uk also.
Member since:20.08.2008
Reviews:27
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Charlie Brooker's Dead Set is a strange, exceptional, wholly unexpected piece of work. It has all of the misanthropy, bile and spectacularly foul wordplay of his underrated Chris Morris collaboration Nathan Barley, it has all of the wit and the critical smarts of his Guardian column and his BBC4 Screen Wipe, and it has all of the oh-my-God-did-I-just-see-that gore of a hundred Fulci pictures.
It is harsh, uncompromising, extraordinarily violent and absolutely hilarious.
Brilliant, in other words, although one says that with a few reservations.
Originally broadcast as 5 20-odd minute episodes (the 45 minute opener excepted), Dead Set hinges on a fairly novel What If?
What If a slew of gut-hungry, brain-craving zombies attacked the Big Brother house mid-series?
What would happen, it turns out, is that a handful of housemates would bicker and backstab and blather as per usual, oblivious to the chaos on the far-side of the walls. The live eviction show would be cut off mid-flow to make way for some increasingly horrifying news reports. Most likely, the undead would infiltrate the compound via the hundreds amassing therein to boo the most recent housemate to be spat back out the telly (In this case, Pippa, played by the wonderful Kathleen McDermott). Soon enough, one would feel safe in assuming, not only would the Big Brother crew be set upon (up to and including Davina McCall - Her most memorable TV death since that BBC1 chat show quipped the Guardian's telly blog)
but so too an array of past housemates who happened to be gathered therein (Zombie Brian! Zombie Aisling!) and, eventually, the current bunch of hopefuls.
Brooker and director Yann Demange have not only crafted a brilliantly witty piece of TV satire, but one of the finest Zombie pictures of the past decade. This is up there with Shaun Of The Dead, with Zack Snyder's Dawn Of The Dead remake, with Danny Boyle's not-a-zombie-flick-except-that-it-is 28 Days Later. It owes quite a lot to all of those, but it arguably outdoes them all in terms of sheer Holy Sh*t!!! mayhem and carnage.
Visually, Danny Boyle stalks Dead Set as surely as its maniacal hordes stalk the periphery of that compound. In all other respects, though, it is Romero to whom the greatest debt is owed.
Much more so than Snyder's aforementioned remake, Dead Set snatches the core concerns of Romero's trilogy, particularly the last two instalments - Dawn Of The Dead and Day Of The Dead (Land Of The Dead doesn't really count, and Diary Of The Dead is wholly unrelated) - and bids them erupt about a thoroughly modern, contemporary setting.
To what end it does this, however, is where the reservations mentioned above come into play. Brooker whole-heartedly accepts the tiresome, reactionary hyperbole spilling from most every corner of the Respectable Media about how Big Brother has stolen the very brains (nudge nudge) of each and every British citizen (for British Citizen read Moron Who'll Drool Afore Whatever Crap Happens To Scar Their Television Set Regardless Of Quality Or Lack Thereof) and nobody will worry about a damn thing so long as Big Brother's on there to get them through the night and we're all going to Hell and Big Brother is responsible and blah blah blah blah blah. It's ignorant, it's as narrow-minded and blinkered as the mythical Zombies it derides, and it's high time people like Brooker grew up a bit where the whole thing is concerned.
"This place was church to them" says the token quietly-insurrectionary housemate as the zombies near the gates. It's an echo of Romero's church / mall metaphor, but much less credible.
To that end, the key character is that of the series producer Patrick, a vile, obnoxious monster brilliantly performed by Andy Nyman. Patrick, it soon becomes clear, is the venture's heart and soul, and neither are especially pleasant. The series of gorgeously written diatribes he tosses at this or the other "idiot" (an epithet favoured by Brooker - see for instance surrogate-Brooker Dan Ashcroft's Rise Of The Idiots business in Nathan Barley, or, indeed, Brooker's own book, Dawn Of The Dumb - Dispatches From The Idiotic Frontline) are quite transparent vehicles for Brooker's own brain-muck on the topic. They are unpleasant, they have a fierce whiff of misogyny about them, and they are, in the final analysis, a bit silly.
All of that, however, helps to reveal the true stars of Dead Set - Channel 4 and the Big Brother crew. Whether this is a three-hour bout of self-flagellation or a brilliant attempt at having guts and eating them, it's an unexpected and commendable move. One fears, however, that Brooker sees it all as further evidence of their idiocy, particularly where past-contestants are involved. So vacant are they, so hungry to have their faces onscreen, that they'll commit to anything with not a thought given the notion that they might be setting themselves up for the kicking of sixty lifetimes.
Those key concerns out of the way, we can get on with the business of singing Dead Set's praises, for there are many praises to be sung. As a horror film, it is perfect - perfectly paced, properly scary (the zombies are genuinely terrifying in a way that zombies rarely are) and - particularly in an early Irreversible-aping episode involving a skull and a fire-extinguisher - almost unwatchably grisly.
As a satire, however misguided, it hits its targets with uncommon precision.
As a drama, it snares the viewer immediately. It's tense, it's emotionally involving and it's rich with believable characters exceptionally written.
It absolutely is a must-see, although how well it works as a single feature-length entity I do not know. Certain knuckle-gnawing cliff-hangers will surely be lost when shorn of episode breaks or advert intrusions.
It is, then, a rare example of a comedy-horror where the former almost outdoes the latter in terms of bleakness and bloodiness. On a number of levels it's jaw-droppingly brave, and marks not only the high point of post-Ghostwatch TV horror, but one of the highest points of recent British horror in general.
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Production Year: 2000 - Horror - Director: Keenen Ivory Wayans - Original Language: English - Classification: 18 years and over - Starring: Carmen Electra, Anna Faris, Kurt Fuller, James Van Der Beek, Keenen Ivory Wayans
From Nathan Barley co-creator and Guardian writer Charlie Brooker comes the outrageous new ... more
thriller Dead Set E4's first-ever horror series released exclusively by 4DVD on 3rd November. Starring Jaime Winstone (Donkey Punch Kidulthood) Dead Set is a...
Postage & Packaging: £0.00 Availability: 3-5 working days
Nov 7th, 2008
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