10 Moments Of Genius From Charlie Brooker

6. Dead Set

dead set With a sensibility, visual style, and mood that still shines through in Black Mirror, 2006's Dead Set took the over-exposed zombie exploitation story into challenging, funny and incredibly grisly territory - especially for terrestrial TV. The best zombie films work by making the undead representative of their time (e.g. walking around a shopping centre in the 1970s, inside a fallout bunker in the 1980s) and Brooker's take on the genre played nicely on the comparison between the zombies and the culture and audience of Big Brother. At a very simple level, a zombie apocalypse takes place during a series of Big Brother, and the housemates and production team fight for survival. But's it so much more than that. For such an artificial set up (a horror genre staple and a reality tv show, coupled with the fact it was being shown on the same channel as Big Brother), there's a horribly real atmosphere to proceedings that, if it were any more blackly comic, well... it'd be simply be too dark to see. Cracking performances (literally in some cases) from Jamie Winstone (Ray's daughter), the actor Kevin Eldon and Riz Ahmed (Four Lions), even the real life Big Brother contestants cameos work, and you can almost forgive Davina McCall's body of work when you've seen her startling performance as a member of the undead (maybe that's because she secretly already is one?). Genius Moment: Again, it's best not to spoil the many surprises, but the closing moments are beautifully played, shot with style, and stay with you longer than an entire series of the actual Big Brother could ever hope to.
Contributor
Contributor

I'm a Westcountry exile now living in Yorkshire with lovely wife and cats (also lovely). I'm a big fan of films, robots, timetravel, and films about timetravelling robots, as well as lots of other action, sci-fi and comedy. I'm currently trying to write a sitcom that doesn't involve robots, and I also blog nonsense on timolsky.blogspot.com. Thanks for taking the time to read my stuff, and feel free to comment.