Episodes 2 & 3, 2008
Written by Charlie Brooker
Directed by Yann Demange
My rating (both episodes): 
IMDB • Official Site
Solid (if a bit predictable) zombie action.
* * *
Premise
Angel has been bit by a zombie; Kelly hatches an audacious plan to get Grayson the supplies he needs to save her life. Patrick and Pippa, trapped in the hospitality room by Davina (the zombified host of Big Brother), learn very quickly that they can’t stand each other. Riq finds out about the outbreak, and decides to head to the Big Brother house in the hope that Kelly’s still alive–and soon finds himself traveling with Alex, another survivor.
Review
It’s being able to write phrases like “Davina, the zombified host of Big Brother” that make this job worth it, I tell you.
But I digress. With episodes two and three, Dead Set firmly sets itself in the mold of classic zombie and survival-horror fare. It’s very predictable; it doesn’t present a new spin on any of its concepts, and it barely bothers to deviate from formula. But that’s not always a bad thing: there’s enough minor variation (in particular, I liked the justification for running zombies, which tends to be a bit of a “Han fired first” issue in horror fandom) and interesting characterization (except, unfortunately, for Kelly–more on that in a bit) to keep things interesting, and watching the patterns unfold is enjoyable in a familiar way.
It’s very nice to see the Big Brother cast actually developing, and while writer Charlie Brooker does occasionally sneak in a bit of commentary (for example, Veronica’s realization that she’s no longer being watched on telly, or Marky’s response to the unflattering magazine article) he doesn’t stop the entire plot to do so, which is nice. Another thing that’s nice is the show’s focus, at least for a while, on people who are dead-to-rights normal instead of total badasses–and the subplot with Angel really hammers home that, no matter how safe the house seems, things are going to get a lot tougher because they don’t have much in the way of weaponry. (Remember, Kelly killed the zombie that bit Angel by bashing its skull in with a fire extinguisher.)
Sadly, Brooker insists on writing Kelly as if she’s Ellen fucking Ripley, because that’s the only way you can have a “strong female lead” nowadays, and follows the same route with Alex, but the performances put in by Jaime Winstone and Liz May Brice make up for it.
The big problem right now, other than director Yann Demange’s incessant shakycam, is the C-plot involving Patrick and Pippa, which is going nowhere. Patrick’s repertoire of insults is fairly impressive, and Andy Nyman does a good enough job of playing the entertaining asshole, but these scenes don’t seem to do much thematically, and in terms of the plot they just delay the scenes we actually care about. (The pacing is very odd in general: I wouldn’t say the episode moves at a fast pace, and yet the focus switches between the three groups of characters very quickly. Particularly towards the beginning of the second episode, it seems like it’s switching between Riq/Alex, Kelly/housemates, and Patrick/Pippa roughly every forty-five seconds.)
Still, so far we’ve got a fairly solid series. Can Brooker and Demange stick the landing? Come back in a couple of weeks and find out!
