The Cutprice Guignol

You’d think I would have had enough of talking about zombies in movies and TV given I spent all of last month doing it. But that, my friends, was just fiction. I want to talk zombies…in the real world.

Well, reality TV, at least, which is the closest we’re going to get to it. I stumbled across BBC3’s reality TV competition show, I Survived a Zombie Apocalypse, and, hey, I have to admit, I quite like the premise. I mean, who amongst us isn’t keeping a secret list in our heads of the people we’d want with us if things were ever to get apocalyptic? Who doesn’t like to think that they would, with their unique blend of physical and mental prowess, survive against the most impossible odds? Just me? Well, anyway. Over the last few days, I’ve been working my way through the series, and I thought I’d share some of my thoughts on it with you today.

I Survived a Zombie Apocalypse ran for only one season, broadcasting eight episodes across February-April 2015. In-universe, the premise is simple: thirteen contestants – uh, survivors – find themselves trapped inMonroe Shopping Village in West Calder (which, as someone who has spent some time in that part of the world, is presumably because it has roughly the population density and atmosphere of a post-apocalyptic hellscape at the best of times), after the rollout of 5G Wi-Fi turned much of the population into ravening, violent maniacs. A single touch from an infected person will lead to infection (elimination). Greg James is the only TV presenter to have survived the zombie apocalypse, and has turned his attention to the rebuilding of human society the only way he knows how: by becoming a bad reality TV show framing device. You know it’s serious, because he’s got fingerless gloves on and only a single handful of pomade in his hair. The in-universe explanation for the broadcast is that an army satellite and radio are monitoring the area and delivering tasks to the survivors trapped in the shopping centre to ensure their survival until the arrival of a helicopter to chauffeur them to a “tropical” survivor’s zone (presumably Ardnamurchan).

The biggest problem with the show is, without a doubt, its tone. I wish it leaned completely into the silliness that’s present in some of its post-production, after the team behind it had clearly realised it was all A Bit Daft, Actually – the talking heads from the contestants are hardly of the utmost seriousness (Aston, for example, introduces himself by confirming that he would throw himself in front of a zombie if it was “for a fit bird”), and the show is interspersed with daft little sketches from the Preventative Agency for Neurological Transformations and Zombification (PANTZ) scattered through to varying degrees of success.

But the problem is, the stakes that the show sets up demand some kind of seriousness, and that’s where it really loses me. The desperate attempts to grow tension and build the stakes fall thunderously flat, with throbbing music pulsing away enthusiastically under life-altering tasks like Finding the Key for a Shutter or the interminable and apparently endless Piling Chairs Up In Front of Doors. Most of the actual tasks basically boil down to a Crystal Maze challenge, except with people in peeling liquid latex groaning four feet away from you. The only meaningfully effective sequences, in theory, are the ones where the contestants actually have to evade the zombies, and honestly…

Look, I mean this with all the love in my heart to cosplayers – I’ve been in a zombie flash-mob or two myself, and they’re great fun. The actors playing the zombies here were, apparently, specially trained for the show, and they really don’t do a bad job, hell, some of the make-up and physical effects are even somewhat serviceable. There’s fast and slow zombies alike, there’s even a great big third-act villain called the Abomination who I kind of love. But the problem here lies in the contestants, none of whom seem to have received an iota of acting training for the show, and whose reactions to the zombies I, unfortunately, just never stopped finding funny. There’s no point where I really brought these contestants as feeling under genuine threat, as most of them seem to be visibly holding back laughter when faced with one of the walking dead; the most urgent we get in fleeing for their lives is a speedy trot, the type of which you might employ when you’re not sure how much trust you can put in an incoming fart. The threat level never rises above “team-building paintball with your work colleagues”, and that’s ultimately where the show turns into a complete trudge.

I Survived a Zombie Apocalypse never made it past a first season, and, frankly, I can see why. The messy tone and ultimately boring episodes bury even the moderately fun stuff beneath a pile of dull, and it fundamentally can’t overcome the issue of the threat remaining utterly unconvincing. But! With that said, I’m keen to hear your takes on this show – did you watch it when it came out? Do you think it deserves a second season? How would you re-jig it to improve upon the first? Let me know in the comments below!

If you’d like, you can check out some of my other writing on British reality TV here, here, here, and here! If you’d like to support my blog, please consider supporting me on Patreon or dropping me a tip via my Support page.

(header image via BBC)