You have 30 minutes to say your goodbyes, then I'm coming to get you!
Pippa: Is that Davina?
Patrick: ...Sort of.
How many of you have watched
Big Brother and thought, "This is the beginning of the apocalypse"? Well, it seems you're not the only one.
Dead Set is the not-so predictable crossover of
Big Brother UK meets the
Zombie Apocalypse, particularly the fast plague-zombies of
28 Days Later. After a
Zombie Infectee staggers into the crowd at a BB eviction, the disease spreads rapidly through the studio, leaving just one safe place: the heavily protected house in the middle. The remaining housemates then try to survive inside the house as the infection spreads and the remaining zombies search for flesh.
The show was written by TV columnist
Charlie Brooker of
Screenwipe fame and is about as satirical as you might expect.
This show provides examples of:
- Anyone Can Die... and then come back and make the other characters die, too. Which happens to the entire cast by the end.
- Better Than It Sounds: Who would have thought "Zombies + Big Brother, not a comedy," could have turned out so well?
- Biting The Hand Humor: Made by a subsidiary of the Big Brother production company, broadcast on the Big Brother channel.
- Camp Gay: Grayson, the bitchy transvestite male nurse.
- Character As Herself: Davina, later Zombie Davina.
- Caught With Your Pants Down: Joplin's less-than-stealthy attempt to watch Veronica in the shower is less than successful (though as a wannabe "glamour" model, Veronica is unfazed by it).
- Cliffhanger: Marky spots Riq approaching the Big Brother house and, thinking he is a zombie, opens fire. Cut to black.
- Cluster F Bomb: Most characters, but Patrick especially.
- Death By Cameo: Many former housemates appear briefly only to be slain when the zombies arrive.
- Despair Event Horizon: Space agrees to open the Diary Room — so Kelly can make a futile attempt to fight her way out — only after seeing a zombie Pippa hammering on the glass outside.
- Dirty Old Man: Joplin, better known to his anti-fans as "Gollum".
- Downer Ending: Everybody is either dead or undead.
- Gorn: Especially during the death of Patrick, who gets the slowest, goriest death in the series.
- And let's not forget Patrick's sweary rant while he hacks the flesh off Grayson's body to use as bait to distract the zombies outside.
- Dumb Blonde: Pippa
Patrick: Do you even understand what is going on here, or is the whole world just colours and shapes and the occasional noise in your head?
- High Octane Nightmare Fuel: The final shots of zombie Kelly staring directly at you through dozens of TV monitors will haunt you.
- Karmic Death: Patrick, who gets the most gruesome, Day Of The Dead-style tribute death. And the surviving housemates in the last episode, for treating Joplin like a Butt Monkey the whole series and causing him to pull a Face Heel Turn and getting everyone killed.
- Kill Em All
- Manipulative Editing: The producer is seen indulging in this. It backfires and makes the manipulatee suicidally open the gates and let the zombies flood in.
- Moral Event Horizon: Patrick, the producer, is pretty mean from the get-go, but to really hammer this home, the show has him throw a man in a wheelchair into the path of a zombie.
- Not Using The Z Word, though one person does quote Night Of The Living Dead.
- Ratings Stunt: Subverted; the housemates think the runner who manages to get into the house is a mentally ill woman added to boost ratings. One housemate comments to the cameras, "I think this is in very poor taste."
- Reality TV Show Mansion: The BB House.
- Regret Eating Me: Patrick yells the famous "Choke on it!" line from Day Of The Dead while being eaten by zombies.
- Self Insert Fic: The sneering, cynical producer Patrick bears some resemblance to the show's sneering, cynical creator. Could also be said of Joplin, who voices many of the creator's views, sometimes verbatim quoting him.
- Shout Out: Night Of The Living Dead and Day Of The Dead.
- Grayson's name may be a Shout Out to Grayson Perry, famous artist and crossdresser.
- Soundtrack Dissonance: Davina McCall has her throat ripped out by a zombie and is left to die to the tune of "Grace Kelly" by Mika.
- Tear Jerker: The death of Riq.
- Tempting Fate:
Patrick (watching Pippa's eviction interview) Urghfff! I cannot imagine... living next door to people like that!
(Later Patrick flees from a zombie Davina McCall into the Green Room, only to find it's occupied by a hysterical Pippa)
Patrick: Not you! Fuck, not you!
- Zombie Apocalypse: Firmly in the mold of 28 Days Later.
- Zombie Infectee: Averted - when Alex is infected, she calmly hands Riq her axe. He knows what he has to do without her even asking him to.
