TV :: Gory Gory Hallelujah

I had a couple of extraordinary viewing experiences over the weekend. I’d like to tell you about them. The first was Dead Set, Charlie Brooker’s Big Brother-zombie mash-up, which I finally managed to devour from start to finish, and absolutely loved. I’ve never been a great fan of zombies, I have to say. The occasional parody can be fun, but for me zombie horror always falls down on the shambling gait of its undead protagonists.

There’s just nothing scary about dead people shuffling over the brow of a hill like a whiff of pensioners in a post office queue. It hardly matters that they have the power to rip off your skullcap and devour your brains. Look at them. They’re shambling. Why, with only the most rudimentary ambling skills, you’d still be able to evade even the nimblest of them. Considering zombiedom is such a terrifying concept, the monsters themselves never really seemed as scary as they ought.

But in Dead Set the zombies don’t shamble; they sprint, and they’re dead fast, and proper hideous.

Keith disagrees with me on this and maintains that the old-style shambling was integral to the power of your traditional zombie in that it inspired creeping dread and a much more profound psychological discomfort. But I say bollocks to that. Give me in-your-face, balls-in-the-fire, sprinting death terror every time. Give me hell hurtling toward you with a jackhammer bite and apocalypse-blue eyes.

Brooker recognises that the rules changed with 28 Days Later, when the infected masses refused to bow down to the tyranny of tradition and got their arses in gear. I like that. I like to see the rules broken. I’d like to see it taken further though. I’d like to see a zombie film where the first word of the film was ‘zombies’, and the dead weren’t stupid but were reasoning and cogent, and in the scenes where they’re tearing their loved ones to pieces, they know exactly what they’re doing, and it’s killing them, and they’re sobbing as they rip the flesh from the bones of friends and relatives, but they just can’t help themselves. It’s a compulsion. An infection. That’s what it is to be a zombie. That’s the film I’d like to see. Although I must admit, it doesn’t sound like much fun. Dead Set on the other hand, was fantastic fun.




The humour was appropriately double-death dark and never really let up. The impotent rage of the zombie in a wheelchair (I know, I know, it’s really serious), baffled by forward propulsion, frustrated by the disabled, non-sprinting corpse it’s been saddled with, will stay with me forever. As will Davina McCall blatting her bolshy body against the same door for three episodes. But best of all was Big Brother producer, Patrick, part rapacious peddler of reality porn, part (one imagines) pitiless word-wizard and helpless misanthrope Brooker himself. Patrick was breathtakingly odious from start to sensationally gory finish and was given all the best lines.

The absolute best thing about Dead Set however – in my very most humble opinion – is the ending.

Spoiler alert.

As the tension mounts and the number of survivors continues to dwindle, the memory of the swimming pool scene clings like the smell of decaying flesh. These zombies have a weakness. Their weakness is water. The fear of an unwarranted happy ending creeps in and threatens everything. Will someone activate the sprinklers in the Big Brother house? Will their be a sudden purgative storm which washes the plague away?

I was certain there would be.

I was wrong.

Everyone dies.

No one is spared.

It’s so refreshing.

I can’t remember the last time I saw a mainstream television drama with the balls big enough not to pander to bland optimism. Dead Set was as unremittingly bleak as any zombie apocalypse ought to be. Totally unsanitised by knee-jerk philanthropy. Utterly, utterly hopeless. I was so pleased.

Then there was the portentous parable aspect. Oh yes there was.

Crap will eat itself.

In the Kingdom of the Bland, Vernon Kaye is King.

My second viewing pleasure was not quite so misanthropic.

I remember seeing Pollyanna at some stage when I was just a willowy wee boy, wrapped up in bed with my portable telly, and I can’t really remember it having that much of an effect on me. Except perhaps for cultivating in me an almighty crush on little Hayley Mills. You know, in The Parent Trap, there are two of her.



Thankfully, that crush has subsided.

When I happened across Pollyanna on Saturday afternoon however, all glum and gloomy and innocently avoiding sport, I remembered enough to stick with it a while. Sunny little Hayley reeled me in with her joyous smile.

There was darkness in my heart however, as I knew roughly what I was in for: saccharine, wholesome garbage, gingham, gospel, vapid all-conquering optimism and weak-chinned acceptance in the name of a loving God and a proud flag. And I was right. But what I hadn’t banked on how much it moved me.

Four times it reduced me to tears in the space of an hour. The last time I was wholly inconsolable.

And what it was was that I totally believed her. Little Hayley. Pollyanna. I believed entirely in her innocence and as such, it completely removed by cynicism. Like I’d had a cynisectomy. I was wholly purged by Pollyanna and I rejoiced in her simple, heartfelt message: not just that we should look on the bright side, but also, that we should look for the good in people.

She’s right.

And of course, her love of life is just as contagious as any cannibalistic, necromantic rage-plague.

Pollyanna brings joy and play and love where once there was merely sadness, and duty, and despair.

Nobody dies.

Everyone is spared.

Lessons are learned.

It’s so refreshing.

These are very strange times.

Mark my words.