So, I just finished watching E4's Dead Set, now I must admit I didn't know about this show till a few days ago when two of my friends were talking about it, I was totally confused and spent about 5 minutes trying to work out what the hell they were talking about and how much crack they'd smoked. Anyway, soon after I popped down to HMV and found the DVD, the moment I saw the E4 logo I died a little inside but decided to give into the peer pressure thought "if everyone else has seen it I have too!"...now this is unlike me because everyone has seen Skins but I would rather be fiddled by Garry Glitter than watch that televised abortion. Anyway, tonight with the encouragement of my house-mate I finally settled down and watched all 5 episodes of Dead Set back to back, I've got to admit E4 have managed to do something right!

If your from anywhere outside of the UK although the show might still appeal to you if you like zombies and so on, you wont get ANY of the references like Divina McCall, the genuine Big Brother "stars", and this years UK Big Brother House.

So, what's the show about? Well as I've mentioned so far, Big Brother and Zombies. The plot follows the survival of a group of staff and contestants from Big Brother at the dawn of a Zombie Apocalypse, which I'm surprised NO ONE has done before, I mean we've all thought about the concept of the house-mates being stuck in the house and so on, about time someone actually did it. Anyway, the story feels very much like it drew all it's inspiration from the 'of the Dead' series, which of course is a good thing because they are the 'how do to a Zombie right' of the movie world. Of course the plot it's self is pretty slim, and to explain any of the sub-plot would mean giving away spoilers which I'd like not to do, but all in all it's a good foundation for some more British Zombie movies above the humorous tone of Shawn of the Dead.

Of course there are some down sides. While all of the actors play their roles well, it feels like the 'bad guy' of the story was a bit beyond belief which is a same because most of the other characters felt real and at worst a little exaggerated. There is also the issue of a lot left untouched. I mean some of the characters seem to act as if there is a tone of background story to them but you never get to see it, also the Zombie outbreak is never explained, nor is it really looked into much. There is an odd moment in the show where on the radios people start picking up a french repeating broadcast, the only world any of them can translate is something like "shelter", they never translate the rest or even bring the whole thing up again for the rest of the show, I'd like to know more about the world outside this one show, but although I complain as if this is a bad thing it is also a good thing because the world the story is based in leaves so many questions unanswered it screams out for a spin-off show of some sort and I really hope they listen to the screams and make it because the writing and production value of the show were both top notch and beyond anything I've seen on E4 in a looooong time.

So, interested in watching the show? There are probably torrents out there for the whole thing but of course I can't condone the use of illegal downloads, one thing worth checking is 4oD, I don't use it so I don't know if it's on there but give it a check out, if not you can always buy the DVD. If your a Zombie fan I REALLY recommend this, it's VASTLY better than the horrible piece of crap known as Diary of the Dead.