Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Undead Is The New Reality

If you've ever watched an episode of a shitty reality TV series like Big Brother or Survivor or The Pick-Up Artist and wished everybody involved would just get ripped apart by rampaging zombies, then you're about to feel seriously awesome.

The UK miniseries Dead Set airs this week (sadly only in the UK), and it's all about what happens to the cast and crew of Big Brother when a zombie plague hits England. The cool, authentic part? It's all filmed on the Big Brother set!

In the first episode, we watch the oddly mundane reactions that our reality TV crew have as the zombie plague starts spreading. At first, they're just seeing it broadcast on the news as "rioting," and because they're in their studio bubble nobody is quite sure what's going on. The main thing they're worried about is that their giant Big Brother Reunion special might get bumped for the news.

Once the zombies take over, though, the show really starts to move. Not because the zombies are fast — which they are, 28 Days Later-style — but because they zero in on what the point of this angry little series really is. Especially when the only people left alive are the reality TV stars on the locked set, slowly melting down as they realize Big Brother isn't watching them anymore. The only ones watching are growling, gore-soaked zombies. Fittingly, reality TV has become ground zero of the zombie invasion, as well as the one place that's already so zombified that it can withstand the rotting onslaught.

Dead Set is five episodes..but there could always be more. The undead don't stay down for long.

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