Black Summer, apparently this is a prequel to Z Nation, which I lasted about half an ep with so I’m not a fan of the franchise so to speak, but I am a zombie aficionado in some respects, anyway, this nails it in IMO, the vignette structure ignores the classic narrative arc so that it becomes character-driven, but not in the standard sense: unlike most American shit the protagonists don’t spend all their time talking about themselves or their mawm because they’re too busy running.
The distracted kinesis of the violence and conflict in the action is shot very much in the style of Alfonso Cuaron or Inarritu so it’s immersive and bewildering, just like it would be if this was actually happening, and I think that’s the appeal to me: unlike Walking Dead and many others in the genre, everyone doesn’t become an automatic crack shot the first time they pick up a gun, so, as it sits firmly in the ‘running zombie’ class, the tension is constant.
In some strange sense you can imagine what it would REALLY be like, as opposed to laughable schlock-fests starring Woody Harrelson that seem to come out every month or so. Unfortunately there is one expositional longeuer halfway through series 2 which pointlessly reins in the pace, perhaps to keep an actor happy, who knows, and regrettably, the inevitable use of the Oasis Trope…
Isn’t it wonderful how people pursued through trackless wastes by Zombies/Cossacks/Nazis etc always manage to find a secluded spot with running hot water and fine wines to have a civilised interlude before they resume their desperate flight?
I call it Lazy Fucking Writing, maself, and it brings the whole standard of the drama down a notch before it is resumed with a finale of nihilistic confusion befitting the general tone of the story. The Koreans re-wrote the book in this genre with Train to Busan so I wonder if the presence of a Korean character who speaks no English and is never translated is a clever nod to that…critics were lukewarm in their reaction to both series, I can only assume it is because they lack a wider perspective of the subliminal possibilities of a series like this; the zombies are merely a mise-en-scene, the real story is humanity in extremis.
