Riq has to also quickly come to terms with the madness that is going on all around him, and he is befriended by a woman also fleeing for her life, having witnessed the loss of her husband right before her very eyes to the flesh hungry horde. Hardened by the experience she takes up arms and shoots anything that moves, heaven help them be they Zombie or still human !. Together they travel by sport SUV in search of news and sanctuary. They soon run into car trouble and are besieged by fast moving Zombies, straight out of Zach Snyder’s modern take on ‘Dawn Of The Dead’ (2004). The woman, perfectly casting Liz May Brice in the role, deftly dispenses with many a crazed reanimate, allowing for several moments of bullet to head accuracy like shooting melons for fun. There is no skimping on the arterial spray, as brain matter spills and bodies jerk into lifelessness, with each hit a successful ‘final’ kill moment to relish.

As Riq deals with his own perilous quest Kelly is shacked up in the Big Brother house with the usual mix of annoyingly eclectic house mates and a particularly aggravating producer called Patrick, played brilliantly by Andy Nyman. This is the kind of guy that is in a position of power who turns up at parties uninvited and ends up spilling his drink on the hosts dress before throwing up in the swimming pool. A real loose cannon who is as dangerous in many respects to his fellow survivors as the marauding Zombies are. Together though the small band of humans need to get sustenance and medical supplies, and that means stepping out of their protective environment within the house and get past those seeking their flesh outside. There are casualties along the way and a fraught supermarket sweep before a run in with shoot anything that moves police officers, released from the shackles of regular authority to serve out a justice of their own, not found in the metropolitan police hand book.
 
In order to better their odds the collective ‘house mates’ need to pull together, and that means securing their position by securing the outer perimeter. Closure of the main gates keeps a small platoon of Zombies within the vicinity, but ensures the ever advancing encroachment of arriving un-dead remain outside of the Big Brother main grounds. Time to pick off the Zombies and spill their brains and guts, before Patrick leads an uprising that turns everything they have achieved upside down as events spiral towards the nihilistic ending !.
 
Although not a comedy in the vein of ‘Shaun Of The Dead’ there is a poignant understatement of dark humour cleverly brought out by the writing team, and an association through recognition by viewers of the Big Brother franchise. A whole host of past house mates have cameos in the show, along with a great turn from regular series host Davina McCall. Seeing Davina viciously attacked, to then resurrect as a fully fledged member of the Zombie brigade, replete with requisite scary contact lenses and a pen-chance for Hannibal Lecter styled behaviour, is brilliantly realised. Her eventual demise is also classic in the lore of Zombie-hood.
 
What is most outstanding in ‘Dead Set’ is that, at last, someone has taken the time to realise what the state of being a Zombie most likely means. Crossing the classic attributes of flesh eating dependency with the modern preference for Ben Johnson like sprinting deadites, spaced out on getting the prize no matter what the cost, here the Zombies have no real thought processes beyond eating. Outside of achieving their objective of fresh meat they are mindless cattle, trapped in a world where any sense of being is non existent beyond that of meandering in a blood red haze as if Jimmy Hendrix were portraying the pied piper, with the still beating human hearts drawing them in like a rapturous concert of living sound. It truly is refreshing to witness that when a Zombie is pushed into a pool it is stuck there in a state of confusion, as no thought processes are evident to assist any form of escape.
 
So, a Zombie outing that has ‘brains’ as well as gore, and a fast paced production that puts most movie scaled productions to shame. Fans of energetic, gory horror and particularly Zombie flicks, should be ‘Dead Set’ on seeing this. A truly satisfying made for TV event that could easily ascend to big screen greatness. Successfully combining the platforms of George A. Romero’s ‘Day Of The Dead’ with Zack Snyder’s rendering of the great man’s ‘Dawn Of The Dead’, this is much more than a temperate homage, it’s a fully fledged rampaging rhinoceros of an event. A triumph for TV horror that hasn’t bitten the hand that has fed it.