Popular reviews

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  Review by clementine ★★★½

  so ur stuck in a zombie apocalypse with riz ahmed and ur first instinct is to have an attitude?

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  Review by Brandon Wade ★★★★½ 1

  How had I never heard of this before?! Written by the genius who created Black Mirror, the only problem with Dead Set is the fact theres only 5 episodes.

  Not to mention it was made 15 YEARS AGO!! If you told me this show was made last I’d believe you. 

  Bravo.

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  Review by adambolt ★★★★

  as someone who hates big brother this was very therapeutic

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  Review by Zach a.m. ★★★★½

  Honest to God the best zombie-anything this side of 1900-Romero.

  Genuinely suspenseful. Topical. Gory as hell. Witty. A dude with a sweet moustache. You have Riz Ahmed. What more do you want from a zombie story?

  What I appreciate most about Dead Set is its ability to cut through the bullshit normally associated with post-apocalyptic zombie survival stories. There's very little, "what are these things?" because the characters understand pretty quickly. There's very time to grieve over killing other humans because the world has gone to complete shit. I do like, however, that despite the obvious events, there's still cops out there looking for looters, giving a small glimmer of hope that some authority might still exist. But I like…

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  Review by Jay ★★★½ 5

  Director: Yann Demange
  Screenwriter: Charlie Brooker
  Cast: Jaime Winstone, Andy Nyman, Kevin Eldon, Adam Deacon, Warren Brown, Kathleen McDermott, Beth Cordingley & Riz Ahmed
  Runtime: 141 min // Certificate: 18

  A contemporary re-telling of the age-old Dawn of the Dead story, in which the living dead gather by the one place that defined them when they were alive (in Romero’s film, the mall, in Brooker’s, the Big Brother House), Dead Set is a taut and gruesome made-for-TV movie (it originally aired as five episodes, shown over the space of a week in the lead-up to Halloween 2008) that packs the fierce comic and satirical edge that we’ve grown accustomed to whenever Brooker is in charge of a project (see Black Mirror…

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  Review by GordoFlower ★★★

  Can you imagine being trapped in the Big Brother house while a zombie outbreak starts outside? Well, you're gonna have to. The way it plays out here could be just about any location.

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  Review by Dead Moon Night ★★★½ 5

  A zombie outbreak occurs while the unknowing crew of a Big Brother reality show faces their own drama. Pretty soon they have to worry about more than their internal intrigues when the deadly virus is spreading.

  Before The Walking Dead there was Dead Set. It is a great british mini-series (5 episodes, 141min so it's like watching a movie), directed by the same guy who recently gave us the splendid IRA-thriller '71. It's a fresh contribution to the zombie genre with characters to love and hate and just like in Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later the living dead are super aggressive monsters which in this case works in it's favour, even though I prefer Romero's slow moving creations. If you're a fan of the genre but tired of seeking the good ones out, look no further - Dead Set is really good stuff!

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  Review by Cliff ★★★★½ 2

  Maybe it's impossible these days to make a zombie movie which doesn't feel reminiscent of others; in the case of the Charlie Brooker-scripted TV movie Dead Set, too much of the zombie carnage feels lifted from 28 Days/Weeks Later and the Dawn of the Dead remake. But to focus on that would be to overlook the brilliant angle Brooker brings to the genre, not least its premise: that some of the few survivors of the zombie holocaust are the housemates in Big Brother. Other horror films have been had reality TV settings, but this Endemol-produced flick has the advantage of featuring actual BB stars: Davina McCall and a host of former housemates. Of the actors, Andy Nyman stands out as the BB director whose character is clearly Brooker's stand-in for himself, and whose comedy scenes are sensibly kept separate from the horror until the final scenes. And it's so well-written that you'll actually be rooting for everyone to survive.

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  Review by Tino Hahn ★★★★ 4

  Die einzigen Überlebenden der Zombie-Apokalypse sitzen im Big-Brother-Container - was von der Prämisse her bereits super klingt,könnte (nicht nur wegen Charlie Brooker als Produzent) auch eine Folge von Black Mirror in Spielfilmlänge sein und würde sich dort einen Platz in den Top 3 sichern.

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  Review by nad 🔪 ★★★½ 3

  “Look at that! Face like a Manchester morgue! Wish they'd nominate you, sour flaps!”

  I’m a bit disappointed by this because from what I’d heard I just imagined it a lot more exciting than it ended up being. that said, considering the time it came out it takes on the zombie genre from a pretty fresh angle and morphs the Romero mall consumerism commentary of Dawn of the Dead into a late-00s reality tv capitalism brain rot of a lesser but intriguingly updated caliber. Riz Ahmed and Jaime Winstone really make this.  

  makes me miss Charlie Brooker’s dark humor that made earlier Black Mirror seasons so good, it suits his social satire much better than the either overly serious or…

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  Review by Matt ★★★★ 4

  Riz Ahmed tells zombies to fuck off for three hours. British culture peaked in 2008 and we all know it. 

  On a serious note though, this is probably the best straight up zombie content since Romero’s Dawn Of The Dead, excluding video games obviously. It’s grisly and rough and definitely borrows the entire aesthetic from 28 Days Later but on a thematic level, it’s got more in common with the OG stuff. It’s basically the 2000’s logical next step in zombie subtext, swapping consumer culture for something far worse, vapid, all consuming reality show style media, where shock value and brainless wannabes are king. The real physical villains here though, besides the zombies, are the opportunists, represented by a greedy, already…

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  Review by Steve G 🇵🇸 🇾🇪 ★★★★

  In the Month of Madness 2022: The Grudge
  

  31 / ?

  Much like Ghostwatch was, Dead Set was a perfect piece of timing when it came to horror television.

  An altogether different beast, of course. Ghostwatch tapped into the mockumentary market in a way that just hadn't been seen before on TV and convinced people they were actually watching something real. Me included - for a while, anyway.

  Dead Set arrived at a time when Big Brother's popularity was arguably at its peak. It had just completed perhaps its best series and was never as good again afterwards, and the thirst for zombie content was also insanely high at that time. It exploited its time brilliantly, commented on the nature…