Dead Set (Episode One)

Before Black Mirror, there was Dead Set.

Dead Set is a Channel 4 produced horror show that originally aired on E4 in 2008, and is now currently available on Netflix (ie: how I noticed it). Written by Charlie Brooker (of Black Mirror fame) and directed by Yann Demange (currently directing Top Boy), the show depicts a zombie outbreak from the perspective of Big Brother contestants who, being contained within the Big Brother set, are oblivious to the apocalypse occurring outside.

I know this is weird saying this a decade after the show aired, but Dead Set still feels really late in coming out in 2008. After watching this episode, I was convinced that it was made circa 2004, around the time Big Brother was huge, and the zombie craze was really kicking off, but no, 2008.

It’s fine I guess. Big Brother didn’t stop airing until 2019 (well past its sell-by-date) but my brain can’t stop comparing it to the Doctor Who episode where the Doctor is trapped in the Big Brother house because contestants who get evicted are disintegrated. That aired in 2005, and was such perfect timing in capturing the zeitgeist as Big Brother viewership had peaked around that time. I could actually follow gossip on the show back then, that’s how big it was. I was at school then, so while years fly away like minutes for me now, three years felt like a looong time back then, so 2008, only three years after that Doctor Who episode, feels late to me. I try not to compare things but as someone who was consuming a lot of British TV in the mid 2000s, it’s something I can’t ignore.

Doctor Who Big Brother Crossover, Bad Wolf, 2005

With that out of the way, first impressions: I approve of the premise. Despite what I said about the show coming late to the party, it’s still a really fun and silly concept to mess around with. It’s kind of like Cockneys Vs Zombies (a film I haven’t seen but still) where the British sense of humour can never quite take zombies seriously (28 Days Later does, but those are Infected, not Zombies. I’ll get into that in a sec). The opening’s also kind of wonderful, and very reminiscent of the opening of George Romero’s classic Dawn of the Dead, which also opens in a TV studio. Funnily enough, whereas the chaos in the Dawn studio is happening because the zombie crisis has already started, the Big Brother studio is chaotic and shouty because it’s the Big Brother studio. Yeah there are some technical difficulties because they can’t contact the London office, and there are fears that news reports about excessively violent riots might disrupt the planned programming, but other than that you can totally imagine this sleazy TV show operating like this. Maybe I’m being unfair to Big Brother, but considering the recent controversies surrounding the Jeremy Kyle Show and Love Island, I’m really not willing to give the most exploitative reality show ever the benefit of a doubt.

I say I approve of the premise, but I don’t love it. The reason for that is it falls into this snobbish subculture that I’ve never been a big fan of. People have always raved to me about Stewart Lee and Charlie Brooker, and while they’ve made me laugh a lot, they’ve still always come across as snide and patronising. Dead Set feels like a group of intellectual middle class people brainstormed up the most detestable group of people imaginable that they’d love to see eaten by zombies, and of course that group is Big Brother fans. Dumb, low-brow, mostly working class people who consider being on reality TV their fifteen minutes of fame. Yeah, f**k those people. It’s the same nasty classist stuff we saw with Little Britain, but packaged into “smarter, more respectable content” for university graduates to enjoy without calling it their “guilty pleasure”. Then again, I’m not sure zombies can ever be called respectable.

I’m sure I’ll engage with the characters and cheer them on to survive, but I can’t pretend that (some) people didn’t watch Dead Set in 2008 loving the fact that it was Big Brother audiences, staff and contestants getting chomped. It’s not a big deal, I still enjoyed the first episode, but as a middle class Brit I know that this attitude comes from an in-built class detestation of anything considered lower class. I love zombies in all situations, but I’m not sure how I feel about Charlie Brooker being the writer behind the show. If I didn’t know that the creators of Dead Set held Big Brother in open contempt, I’d appreciate it a lot more. Maybe Cockneys Vs Zombies is equally exploitative, or maybe it has a genuine love for cockney culture. I’ll need to check it out.

Alright, enough negativity about the British class system (for now). Let’s talk zombies! The zombies in Dead Set are pretty good. They’re kind of a blend between the running Infected from 28 Days Later and your more typical flesh-eating zombies. No weird spitting blood nonsense, these guys straight up rip throats open! I think the idea is that they’re rabid and crazy as opposed to undead, so they seem a bit smarter about infecting everyone first, and then dinnertime! Still not smart enough to open doors though. Part of me’s a little disappointed that they’re not the slow Romero walking dead, but considering that the show is about Big Brother contestants not realising that there’s a zombie apocalypse outside, it wouldn’t make much sense for the Big Brother staff to get overrun immediately by slow-moving corpses without any of the contestants noticing. Maybe they could’ve explained it away as them all being too self-absorbed.

Shaun of the Dead faded eyes (and my favourite extra)

Couple interesting details. First are the zombie contact lenses. I’ve seen a lot of these eyes at Halloween parties and zombie walks, but I can’t think of something other than Dead Set that actually has them. I initially thought they were a lot like the eyes in Shaun of the Dead, but those are more greyed

Robert Carlyle blood red eyes in 28 Weeks Later

out than these. So the closest I could find are the blood-red contacts from 28 Days Later series. If I see anyone with the zombie contacts I’m just gonna assume they’re cosplaying as Dead Set zombies from now on.

The other interesting detail is the blood. Dead Set has this really greyed out, dark tint over everything that makes you feel like you’re in the middle of a concrete council estate. So dark red blood looks black. I get the feeling that they filmed it normally, but Channel 4 flaked out on airing an uber violent show with real-looking blood. So, Taxi Driver-style, they tinted the visuals to make the blood look less like blood. I’ve never really understood the thought process behind stuff like this. They agreed to air a zombie show, you can’t avoid the inherent violence of the genre. This might also explain the choppy editing of the action scenes, where the scenes of zombies running rampant amongst the Big Brother crowds were cut up so you couldn’t really see much of what was going on. Shaky cam and choppy editing give the action a fast pace, which is needed for fast zombies, but it does rob the scenes of that satisfying goriness you get from watching a Romero classic.

“Big Brother ain’t watching us.” It’s cool having a scenario where this line is sinister. With the cameras no longer following them around because everyone’s either been eaten or zombified, the contestants are alerted to the fact that something’s gone wrong, though they can have no idea what. The show is at its strongest when it’s having fun with the Big Brother stuff like this. How else would Big Brother contestants notice that something was wrong? Then there’s great touches like Davina McCall’s cameo. McCall was the presenter of Big Brother between 2000 and 2010 so it was really fun seeing her running around zombified. Looking into this after the fact I’m noticing that there were a bunch of other Big Brother contestant cameos, but as it’s now 2019 and I didn’t watch the show that much, all of those great details flew over my head.

I did notice some of the actors though. I knew Warren Brown immediately as Luther’s partner in the Idris Elba show Luther, and recognised Kevin Eldon from a ton of stuff. Then again, most of the actors in this are British TV regulars, so it makes sense that I would recognise a few of them. The big surprise was Riz Ahmed, appearing here long before Star Wars as one of the Big Brother staff. I didn’t see him get zombified so maybe there’s more hope for his character here than there was in Rogue One. It was fun seeing Krishnan Guru-Murthy reprise his role as the anchorman reporting the end of the world. Fun fact about reporters. In Britain at least, you can’t depict news channels reporting false news in ways that could look like real life. Hence Guru-Murthy being viewed from the side here. I guess it’s a way to prevent a War of the Worlds situation occurring.

The morning after the zombie outbreak, there are only two survivors left amongst the staff:  production runner Kelly (Jaime Winstone) and studio boss Patrick (Andy Nyman). Basically you have the good guy, Kelly, and the scumbag Patrick. Patrick survived by closing the door on one of his colleagues so she could be bitten while he ran for it, and then when hiding in a bathroom cubicle, he shoves a person in a wheelchair into a zombie so that person too, can be eaten instead of him. These are the comedy highlights of the episode for me, that and Davina McCall banging on the door screaming. I love unpleasant characters, especially in crisis situations like this. As Day of the Dead and The Walking Dead have shown, it’ll probably be the worst of humanity who survive the apocalypse. I do think using a disabled person as a human shield is a bit of a lazy shorthand, but it was funny in a twisted way to me, so I can’t say it wasn’t effective.

Kelly is the protagonist, the underdog with a meh boyfriend and crappy job, quietly flirting with a guy who’ll later try to bite her (and not in the fun way). She’s relatable, especially at the end when (Spoilers for an eleven year old show) she manages to break into the Big Brother set and meet the contestants. It’s the wonderful moment when a character has to try and explain a zombie apocalypse, and of course she can’t explain it. She’s just a small, crazy girl covered in blood, carrying a pair of scissors. It’s understandable that the contestants would just laugh at her and think she’s crazy (though I didn’t care for them calling her a “mong”. 2008 eh?) It’s only when a zombie does break into the room and bite one of the contestants (dun dun DUUUUUN!) that they realise this girl might be telling the truth.

Okay…wow. That’s my review of Dead Set (Episode One). I don’t think my reviews of the next episodes will be quite as long but you never know. I’m hoping I change my opinion about it being snobbish though the contestants acting like idiots most of the time hasn’t gotten my hopes up. You never know though. I’m excited to see a cast of mainly working class characters fight the undead horde. It brings zombies back to their routes, where working class characters like Ben from Night of the Living Dead were the protagonists, so I’m excited for that.