Dead Set (Big Brother Zombies)

[WhiteCrow]

Big Brother was brain dead anyway - now it'll eat your brains ...

Dead Set is a British five-part horror thriller created by British comedy writer Charlie Brooker. The series is set in the Big Brother house and is due to be aired on E4 from 27 October to 31 October 2008. The plot involves a zombie outbreak which strands the housemates inside the Big Brother house. Although the house is one of the only places left where people can shelter from the zombie attack, the infection soon seeps in and what follows is an unimaginable terror.

http://www.e4.com/deadset/

[Dirk Gently]

Should liven up the show, it's been dead on its feet for years.

Davina looks good there.

[Paul Monk]

I think this could be fun. You can't beat zombies (but you can blow their heads off with a ruddy big gun)

[Rob McCow]

created by British comedy writer Charlie Brooker

If it's as searingly vicious as his 'Dawn of The Dumb' book it should be a real treat!

[WhiteCrow]

I'm really looking forward to this. I think it could be really quite fun if done well, and the use of the BB style format in such a different way, has the potential to be gripping TV on a daily basis not seen since the absolutely excellent Space Cadets.

[Rob McCow]

SFX have a big interview with somebody or something.

Adore Big Brother? Despise Big Brother? Either way, you’re likely to be hooked by the high-concept of E4’s new five-part zombie drama Dead Set, in which contestants in the reality show get caught up in an undead apocalypse. It’s the brainchild of acerbic TV critic Charlie Brooker, presenter of Screen Wipe. Brooker already has writing credits on shows like Brass Eye and Nathan Barley, but don’t expect his first “straight” drama to be a laugh-a-minute spoof.

“The thing that came up a lot was Shaun of the Dead, obviously”, Brooker tells SFX. “I thought that was great, but what we didn’t want to do was to do that again. Weirdly, because our set-up is so inherently comic - the Big Brother house – it’s actually probably best to play it quite straight. So with our characters, nobody says, ‘Oh, this is like a zombie film!’ or anything like that. It’s a world in which zombie films don’t exist, they don't call them zombies, they don’t really understand what they are and they’re very frightened. Whereas in Shaun of the Dead (which I thought was brilliant) it’s very much an out-and-out comedy. We're not played for laughs in that sense. We’re hopefully genuinely frightening and very gory and quite bleak. And then on the other hand, because of the setting and because of some of the characters we’re not that straight-faced. So I hope that the tone sticks with people. You never know how these things will go down.”

Ray Winston’s daughter Jaime plays the central character, a runner on the show called Kelly. The other main character is Patrick, a Big Brother producer. “He becomes more significant as the series goes on”, explains Brooker. “I think people who are aware of my tone are expecting things to be written in a certain way, and when he opens his mouth they will start going, ‘Oh yeah, that’s Brooker!’, I suspect.” He's played by Andy Nyman, a regular collaborator with Derren Brown. “He wears various hats”, says Brooker. “He’s a magician, and he directs Derren Brown’s live shows writes on a lot of his programmes, so he’s a very interesting character in real life. Hopefully, if the programme is a success I think this would bring him to a lot of people's attention, because he approaches the role of Patrick with relish...”

You might be thinking that Brooker has hit on a way to get lots of fantastic production value for free. Unfortunately, the Dead Set team wasn’t able to use the real Big Brother house. “We hoped we would be able to use it at one point”, admits Brooker, “But it became apparent that it simply wasn’t going to be feasible for all sorts of scheduling reasons and practical reasons. We had to build it at great expense in Chertsey, where they shoot Primeval. It costs a lot to build a Big Brother house, we’ve discovered! The art department did an amazing job. The thing about building a Big Brother house is it’s always different but it’s also somehow the same, so they had to create a house that instantly looks like Big Brother but also doesn’t look like a Big Brother. At the time we were building it, this year’s series hadn’t gone out, and we had no idea what they were gonna do, so we were also slightly wary. Like, we’ve put a big biodome greenhouse in the garden. Luckily, they didn’t do that this year!”

The production team of the real Channel 4 show were immensely helpful, however. “We’ve got an eviction scene in the first episode where we needed our actress to leave the Big Brother house and be evicted in front of a big crowd”, reveals Brooker. “The only practical way to do that was to go down to Elstree, put her in the Big Brother house and evict her on an eviction night - which is what we did! No viewers would have noticed cos the broadcast went out with a delay. It was the night that Belinda was evicted from this series. That night, after Belinda came out and Davina had interviewed her, she then evicted Pippa, who’s our actress. Obviously, to do that we had to cooperate with all the Big Brother people and they were insanely helpful - especially because you could read our show as an attack!”

Dead Set will also feature a host of cameos from former housemates. “What you don’t want people to think is, ‘Are they all gonna have major speaking roles?’” clarifies Brooker. “No they’re not! They were all faultlessly pleasant as well - like Saskia, who was in Big Brother several years ago. I tell you what, she scrubs up well! And she makes a very good zombie, and she was unfailingly pleasant and, y’know, I've been very rude about her in print! That’s the other thing: you meet a lot of people that you’ve been horrible about and then you realise they’re incredibly nice and you feel like an arse – it’s really disappointing!”

The zombie films of George Romero are known for having something of a political subtext. Brooker is a big fan, especially of Dawn of the Dead, in which survivors hole up in a shopping mall. “There’s the famous speech they have from the roof where they take about the shopping mall being an important place in their lives, and that’s pretty much as overt as it gets in that film - the rest of the time it’s just an enjoyable extra twist. That’s sort of what we're going for with this. So it’s there, definitely, but it’s not like a Media Studies lecture! It’s not as overt as people will expect.”

Horror lovers can also expect some fan-pleasing in-jokes. “There are a couple of references to get zombie aficionados going, ‘Oooh!’”, confirms Brooker. “There’s an explicit reference to Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue in there, that’s just a bit where somebody says, ‘Look at that - she’s got a face like a Manchester morgue!’ Not the most subtle, but the average viewer watching that is just gonna think that’s a florid way of describing someone’s unpleasant face, whereas a zombie aficionado is gonna go, ‘Oh yeah!’. We didn’t go quite as far as Shaun of the Dead - they had people eating at an Italian restaurant called Fulci’s - but there’s definitely the odd nod. We’ve got a kind of homage to that scene in Dawn of the Dead where they stand on the roof and go, ‘Why are they coming here?’”

Brooker admits that he’s intrigued to see what kind of reception the show will get when it airs. “It’s not really a mainstream show in some respects, and in others... I don’t know! In a lot of ways it’s a very straight, populist show. The model was things like 24, so it’s not chinstrokey or trying to be clever a lot of the time - it's pretty dumb in a lot of ways! A lot of people who are looking forward to it hate Big Brother and are looking forward to it because they wanna see all these people getting their heads ripped off, so I think in a lot of ways people will take from it what they want. So I’ll be interested to see what people make of it.”

Dead Set airs on E4 from Monday to Friday on the week beginning 27 October.

[WhiteCrow]

I just hope it's not "who survives ... you decide!".

Although from the look of the publicity shot about it will be "you have one minute, then we're coming to get you!".

[Martin Penny]

I'm quite looking forward to this as well, I didn't know Charlie Brooker was involved. Hopefully it'll be good!

[Pip Madeley]

Sounds like an interesting idea, I'll give it a go!

[WhiteCrow]

A bit slow so far building everything up. Brilliantly funny scene of the Big Brother crowd and crew being slaughtered to music.

[Paul Monk]

I quite enjoyed it. It was good solid zombie fare but it did have a few things that disappointed. It was a bit slow to get going as Mike said and it wasn't anywhere as satirical as I thought it might be. Also the hand held camera stuff was annoying and made it incredibly hard to see what was going on. Just a little personal thing for me as well was the inclusion of Kevin Eldon as Joplin. I'm sure he's a fine serious drama actor but I just couldn't accept him as anything other than a comedy performer and that slightly ruined the atmosphere.
Still now they're in the house it should get more interesting.

[WhiteCrow]

I loved Kevin Eldon as an actor - he was the best thing in Big Train and Hyperdrive. But I really believe this would work better if all the housemates were relative unknowns.

I wanted to see the room full of BB former contestants get bitten. Although how can you make Jade Goody seem any more rabid?

[Pip Madeley]

Although how can you make Jade Goody seem any more rabid?

Bit mean to say that of someone dying of cancer, Mike.

[WhiteCrow]

Bit mean to say that of someone dying of cancer, Mike.

Oh I'm sorry - the cancer card obviously cancels out the racist bully card. People can still have cancer and be thoroughly vile, and personally I don't like the way all the tabloids have sneaked her back onto the front page over this, when she was just toxic to touch after her Celebrity Big Brother.

A lot of people have dealt with cancer - it's a devastating disease. It can be terribly unfair. I've very emotional as I'm now coming up to the 2nd anniversary of my Godmothers death from cancer.

However I find the fact that Jade Goody's cancer has been used as a "PR coup", absolutely ****ing vile and disgusting. And it really demeans real families who are going through similar. Just don't start me on this.

[Pip Madeley]

It was the use of the word "rabid" I was objecting to Mike, I wasn't making her out to be an angel.

[WhiteCrow]

Sorry Pip - but I think you realise how irate this issue gets me.

[Alex]

Like Paul, I found the shaky cam a bit annoying as well, it was just a bit too much at times and was unneeded - the final moments of the episodes where they're all in shock worked far more effectively as the camera was allowed to linger on what had happened.

But overall I did enjoy it a lot, it's got a nicely real feel to it, and I did find it genuinely disturbing when Davina was attacked, and especially the moment her body slides to the floor. The tone's unsettling, and unlike in most zombie films where the hero of the day shrugs off the horror of the situation in a couple of minutes and then goes round slaughtering everyone, it was interesting to see someone really traumatised by it.

It didn't bother me about Kevin Eldon to be honest, I'm a huge fan of his so just like seeing him get high profile work, and whilst a few of us know who he is, I'm sure to the majority of the public he's a bit of an unknown, or one of those faces that you recognise but you're not sure from where.

I'm a bit concerned about where it's going to go for the next four episodes - if only because out of the surviving humans we've got left only the heroine seems that appealing - but I've heard that the following episodes do maintain the quality and if anything are better, so I am looking forward to seeing them.

[WhiteCrow]

Wow - 2nd episode with everything set up was much better. Kudos to Davina for doing a very good zombie.

[Matthew T]

Bought the DVD of this today and watched the whole thing in one go. It was brilliant!

Without ads it only runs to a little over 2 hours but I would really have liked to see a lot more of the characters. I think this could have easily stretched to 6 1 hours episodes and been even better.

That's a minor criticism though, I loved it, better than several recent big screen zombie movies. Lots of scares and some good laughs too. Davina put in a great performance! I really liked the guy playing Kelly's boyfriend, Riq, and the blonde girl who used to be in The Bill too.

The ending was bleak but powerful, you know you're not going to get an alltogether happy ending in a zombie film though.

[Alex]

I thought it was excellent too, it's a shame it wasn't on Channel Four as it deserved to have more exposure than it actually got.

The only thing that bothered me was that I thought that the Big Brother producer was slightly OTT, he was the only character who didn't feel 'real' to me, but then I did take great delight when he was torn apart at the end. And Davina was excellent wasn't she, the part where she's initially killed was really shocking, as were her scenes as a zombie. I'm just glad that my Mum didn't hear about this, as she's a Big Brother fan, but I think she'd have been traumatised by seeing those scenes!

I wish we'd seen a few more of the past contestants as zombies too, bar Brian they all seemed to disappear, but that's a minor complaint in what was one of the best British dramas that I've seen in years.

[Martin Penny]

I also thought it was really good, it all felt very realistic, which I think made it more terrifying. And some of those deaths at the end were horrific!

I loved Patrick, the producer, horrible man though he was, everything that came out of his mouth made me laugh - and part of me wishes he and Joplin would have gotten a spin off series.

[Wayne]

watched the whole thing in one go. Without ads it only runs to a little over 2 hours

Watched this earlier, thanks to Matt. I thought it was generally ok, although Zombie stuff is a bit yawnsville for me sometimes.
Didn't realize it was the real Davina until i read this thread. It's so lng since i saw any real BB that i thought it was a slightly doggier lookalike actress.
Totally agree with Alex re the BB producer. God, what an annoying c*nt.
But Beth Cordingly was hot.
I wasn't wild about it. It was a bit dull in parts, & not really very scary, but it wasn't bad overall. 6/10.