Genre: Horror | Drama
Original Broadcast Network: BBC America
Discs: 1
Run time: Approximately 180 minutes (3 episodes)
Release date: October 8, 2013
Creator/Writer: Dominic Mitchell
Director: Jonny Campbell
Synopsis:
In The Flesh, BBC AMERICA’s three-part series that WIRED called “the thinking person’s Walking Dead,” is a unique take on a zombie apocalypse: what happens when humanity survives the uprising… and so do the zombies? When 18-year-old Kieren Walker (Luke Newberry, Anna Karenina, Quartet) committed suicide four years ago, his friends and family thought they’d never see him again – that is, until the dead began to rise. After a catastrophic war, imprisonment, and months of rehabilitation and medication, hoards of brain-craving undead have returned to a lucid state. The zombies, now known as PDS (Partially Deceased Syndrome) sufferers, are gradually being introduced back into a society that so recently fought them off for survival. For Kieren, returning home means confronting the community that rejected him and the family he chose to leave behind. Can Kieren’s neighbors forgive him for what he did in his untreated state? More importantly, can Kieren forgive himself- for his life as a zombie, and for the things he did before? This three-part mini-series about feeling ‘other’ explores how chaos is born, and the destructive effects it can have on both the individual and the community. A second season of this critically acclaimed series, created and written by Dominic Mitchell, has already been confirmed.
Emily Bevan (The Thick of It), Steve Evets (Shameless), Kenneth Cranham (Upstairs Downstairs), Ricky Tomlinson (The Royle Family), David Walmsley (Doctors), and Harriet Cains (Human Beings) also star in this thought-provoking series about redemption, forgiveness and the battle against prejudice. The three-part series is directed by Jonny Campbell, with Ann Harrison-Baxter serving as producer and Hilary Martin as executive producer.
What if you died, came back as a zombie, attacked and ate people, and then were cured? How would you live with what you’d done? How could you return to your home, to a community that knew what you did, maybe even to their loved ones? What if that community was a small town, and you were one of many in the town and in the world in this same situation? How would your friends and family deal with it? How about the villagers who were members of a militia that fought against the zombies before the cure?
Those are just some of the many questions raised in this quiet, intriguing, thought-provoking three-part mini-series. It’s not always pretty, but it’s the actions of some of the villagers that are revolting, not the visuals. We still periodically see the blown irises and pallor of the PDS sufferers, but for the most part there wouldn’t be a lot for Greg Nicotero to do on this production. By the way, those of you who are sticklers for knowing exactly all the zombie rules in every zombie story, we are given them throughout, right up to the end, but you’ll need to pay close attention because they aren’t announced, but elegantly worked into the story.
Although we feel sympathetic towards Kieren and his family in the first episode, it isn’t until the second episode that the series gets more active, lively – sorry – and really pulls you in. It’s also where most of the humor is, though there are moments throughout. There are some cute quiet jokes (when the family plays a board game, it’s Life; one of the main PDS sufferers has the last name “Dyer”) and some actual laugh-out-loud moments, and they are a strength, but not a distraction. By the final, third episode there are some choices made, and some resolve, if not resolution. Wheels are turning, and this is far from over.
In the Flesh has been renewed for a second season, and I can easily see it going in any of several directions. If Season 1 is any indication, it won’t take just one. This is a rich and well-developed miniseries full of many different thoughts and ideas and conflicts, and some very interesting new concepts to add to the panoply of zombie storytelling that rises before us.
Special Features: Like The Secret of Crickley Hall, another BBC America miniseries DVD released at the same time as In the Flesh, there are no special features. Bummer.
Still, this is a terrific miniseries that simply must be watched in its entirety to be appreciated. Get it and watch it now, because there are more non-gory returning-from-death series being developed as we speak, following in the wake of this one, and In the Flesh deserves to be seen first.
I give In the Flesh Four Out of Five Stars.
In the Flesh is available from Amazon now; here’s the link:
[AMAZONPRODUCT=B00BXRVQO8]
