Dead Set

As the week geared up to Halloween, Dead Set hit our E4 screens with a quiet but bloody entrance. Unfortunately, life being the way it is, I couldn't catch it at the time, but a Sunday afternoon recovering with On Demand and I was soon up to date with all the latest going's on from the fictional Big Brother house.

Set in modern Britain, with the current mass hysteria in fame, celebrity and reality TV, Dead Set was a modern take on Dawn of the Dead, with the supermarket being replaced with our own dear Big Brother compound. I'm not sure what I was expecting, I think a mediocre, slash horror/comedy show which whilst entertaining wouldn't have been much to write home about - how wrong could I be! I was blown away by the sheer horror and original creativity of the show. At times I had my hands to my face in terror and I can really say I thought it was on a TV par with "28 Days Later".

Filming of the pre-zombie extracts took place whilst Big Brother 2008 happened so the set was real, the crowds were real, Davina was real. The first hour long episode slowly built the tension with Kelly, the poor trodden upon production assistant running around trying to sort everything out (as us runner's do!) and the producer from hell, an arrogant, stressed, sexually inappropriate and Ricky Gervais office esc character generally screaming and being horrendous to everyone. But it was when the zombie horror took hold that the real terror struck. As the production office went down and a confused Davina, mid eviction interview, tried to understand what was going on, the residents in the Big Brother House were blissfully ignorant. Seeing Davina running, screaming and then having her throat ripped out was pretty horrendous, I mean, its Davina McCall! The Big Brother reunion, hosting a whole assortment of cameo's, also stirred gut wrenching feelings as Ashleyne, Brian, Imogen, screamed, ran, scrambled but were one by one bitten and ripped to pieces. It was pretty gory and wonderful stuff!

As all us runners do, Kelly managed to survive the onslaught and broke her way into the Big Brother House, whilst the ghastly producer and recently evicted housemate were holed up in another room, a zombie Davina trying to smash her way through the door. But this is only the start, it all starts to go horribly wrong as housemates, as they do, begin to fight, backstab, want to escape. I won't tell you who survives, who doesn't survive and what generally happens because it's TOO great to spoil. I loved it. I'll be buying it on DVD. And Davina, our hero, was genuinely awesome.

See the website here