Does This Mean We're Not On Telly Any More?
Which of you lovely people anonymously sent me the badges? Thank you so much! The Pokémon and Baker Street ones are my favourites; the one that looks vaguely like Zombie Derren Brown alarms me quite a lot. ♥!
In spite of all my worries about watching it, Dead Set, it turns out, doesn't freak me out nearly as much as Being Human, which I am genuinely considering giving up. I love Annie and Mitchell and (most of the time) George, and I love the relationships they have with each other, but every time I watch Being Human it just upsets and depresses me. When I start thinking 'there's a new episode coming up' with dread rather than excitement, it's probably time to stop watching.
Not that Dead Set is a festival of delight, but I'm able to watch it in a slightly more detached way, possibly because I know a bit more about what's going on behind the scenes and possibly because the threat it deals with is very specific and (let us hope) fictional.
A few not-really-spoilery thoughts on Dead Set: whilst watching, I found myself thinking on many occasions that Kelly (whom I liked very much) looked really rather similar to Lisbon of The Mentalist.
Therefore, Lisbon and her team need to fight zombies.
I don't think anyone can argue with that logic.
Grayson is a sweetheart. Patrick is an arsehole, but an arsehole who appears to be to at least some extent based on the writer, which is interesting (don't hate yourself, Brooker!). Riq is sort of adorable. Kelly is my favourite character, and I loved the way her fear and despair and determination were portrayed. I liked the fact that the housemates, despite all their failings, were fundamentally decent people who cared about each other and worked together; it would have been easy to go 'oh, look, the only survivors are the absolute dregs of humanity in the Big Brother house', but it was actually much less cynical than it could have been. We know you don't really hate humanity, Brooker; you're not fooling anyone.
Although I generally feel that zombies should be slow-moving, I actually didn't mind the running zombies here. Putting the studio out of action very quickly was necessary for the plot, so they sort of had to be excused, and I'd heard that Brooker had originally planned to set it over a longer period of time and show how the zombies slowed down as they decayed, which makes a sort of sense; as the muscles are presumably still intact, why shouldn't a freshly turned zombie be able to run as fast as a human?
I think Dead Set is one of the few things I've watched and enjoyed and yet have absolutely no desire to cross over with Pokémon. Still wouldn't mind the RPF crossover in which David Mitchell and Charlie Brooker find themselves facing the undead hordes, though. The problem is that I have a complete aversion to real-person deathfic, so I'd have to somehow contrive an unlikely happy ending. THE ZOMBIES DECIDE THAT BROOKER IS TOO BITTER TO EAT. Brooker is mildly offended but, let's be honest, not complaining. Mitchell survives using his hitherto undisclosed magical powers. No, I'm not entirely certain this idea is going to work.
In spite of all my worries about watching it, Dead Set, it turns out, doesn't freak me out nearly as much as Being Human, which I am genuinely considering giving up. I love Annie and Mitchell and (most of the time) George, and I love the relationships they have with each other, but every time I watch Being Human it just upsets and depresses me. When I start thinking 'there's a new episode coming up' with dread rather than excitement, it's probably time to stop watching.
Not that Dead Set is a festival of delight, but I'm able to watch it in a slightly more detached way, possibly because I know a bit more about what's going on behind the scenes and possibly because the threat it deals with is very specific and (let us hope) fictional.
A few not-really-spoilery thoughts on Dead Set: whilst watching, I found myself thinking on many occasions that Kelly (whom I liked very much) looked really rather similar to Lisbon of The Mentalist.
Therefore, Lisbon and her team need to fight zombies.
I don't think anyone can argue with that logic.
Grayson is a sweetheart. Patrick is an arsehole, but an arsehole who appears to be to at least some extent based on the writer, which is interesting (don't hate yourself, Brooker!). Riq is sort of adorable. Kelly is my favourite character, and I loved the way her fear and despair and determination were portrayed. I liked the fact that the housemates, despite all their failings, were fundamentally decent people who cared about each other and worked together; it would have been easy to go 'oh, look, the only survivors are the absolute dregs of humanity in the Big Brother house', but it was actually much less cynical than it could have been. We know you don't really hate humanity, Brooker; you're not fooling anyone.
Although I generally feel that zombies should be slow-moving, I actually didn't mind the running zombies here. Putting the studio out of action very quickly was necessary for the plot, so they sort of had to be excused, and I'd heard that Brooker had originally planned to set it over a longer period of time and show how the zombies slowed down as they decayed, which makes a sort of sense; as the muscles are presumably still intact, why shouldn't a freshly turned zombie be able to run as fast as a human?
I think Dead Set is one of the few things I've watched and enjoyed and yet have absolutely no desire to cross over with Pokémon. Still wouldn't mind the RPF crossover in which David Mitchell and Charlie Brooker find themselves facing the undead hordes, though. The problem is that I have a complete aversion to real-person deathfic, so I'd have to somehow contrive an unlikely happy ending. THE ZOMBIES DECIDE THAT BROOKER IS TOO BITTER TO EAT. Brooker is mildly offended but, let's be honest, not complaining. Mitchell survives using his hitherto undisclosed magical powers. No, I'm not entirely certain this idea is going to work.