Episode #1.4 (30 Oct. 2008)

Riq and Alex leave the comfort of the farmhouse planning to set off for the big brother house and Patrick and Pippa make a chance at escape from the small room Davina has trapped them in ...

Director:

Yann Demange

Writer:

Charlie Brooker

Stars:

Jaime Winstone, Andy Nyman, Riz Ahmed

Cast

Episode cast overview, first billed only:
Jaime Winstone	...	Kelly
Andy Nyman	...	Patrick
Riz Ahmed	...	Riq
Liz May Brice	...	Alex
Warren Brown	...	Marky
Beth Cordingly	...	Veronica
Adam Deacon	...	Space
Kevin Eldon	...	Joplin
Kathleen McDermott	...	Pippa
Davina McCall	...	Davina McCall
Brian Belo	...	Brain Belo
Chizzy Akudolu	...	Angel (archive footage)
Raj Ghatak	...	Grayson (archive footage)
Cavan Clerkin	...	Dennis (archive footage)
Kyle Summercorn	...	Bob (archive footage)

Storyline

Riq and Alex leave the comfort of the farmhouse planning to set off for the big brother house and Patrick and Pippa make a chance at escape from the small room Davina has trapped them in and join the other in the Big Brother house.

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Plot Keywords:

survival horror

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Genres:

Comedy | Drama | Horror

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Details

Release Date:

30 October 2008 (UK)

Company Credits

Technical Specs

Runtime:

141 min 141 min (5 episodes)

Did You Know?

Trivia

The speech given by Joplin (Kevin Eldon) regarding why the zombies flock to the Big Brother house is similar to a speech given in Dawn of the Dead about why the zombies flock to the shopping mall.

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Goofs

When Patrick is cutting up Angel's body to throw to the zombies outside, the amount of blood on his face changes between shots. At first, his left eye is covered and the camera cuts to the cast members inside and then the camera cuts back to Patrick and his face is almost clean. The camera briefs on Kelly huffing in a chair and then back to Patrick and his face is covered in blood again.

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Quotes

Patrick: [whilst hacking at Grayson's corpse] You should come and help me with this! It's not as bad as it looks! Buncha cowards! I'll do it! I'll fucking do it! Have that! Lovely! Look at that! What's the fucking matter with ya? Only backwards fucking livestock! Eh? Do you think you've still got a fucking audience? Do you? Or what you gonna do? Fucking... sit here, breathing in each other's fucking bum clouds until the sky falls in? Pardon me, but *I* am a fucking bit more fucking ambitious than that! A...

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Connections

References Doctor Who (2005)

User Reviews

More of the same.

Dead Set (#1.4) starts as Riq (Riz Ahmed) sees his girlfriend Kelly (Jaime Winstone) on the telly in the Big Brother house safe & well & decides he has to get to her, Alex (Liz May Brice) isn't keen on the idea but has little choice to agree. By a strange coincidence the house Riq & Alex are trapped in actually has a boat round the back & a river which goes right past the Big Brother house which is sort of lucky really. Kelly & the house-mates manage to rescue Patrick (Andy Nyman) & Pippa (Kathleen McDermott) who killed the Davina McCall zombie & get them back to the relative safety of the Big Brother house. Now they must try to figure out a way to escape the zombie plague & reach safety...

This British produced zombie horror TV mini-series was originally shown as five separate parts over a week but it is also available as one long two hour plus edit which I honestly don't think I could sit through, I mean over two straight hours of this rubbish would be hard to sit through. Like the previous couple of episodes the script follows three separate sets of character's although the plot is trying to bring them all together. I have actually thought Dead Set has been a rather dumb & clichéd zombie horror series so far & I would say this is the first episode where the script tries to say anything relevant at all. Patrick has a rant about how he worked he way up to his position of success & that wanting a quick fix to become famous by appearing on a show like Big Brother is just, well, wrong. To be honest I am pretty sure that sitting through over an hour & a half of Dead Set to get to that momentous social message has not been time well spent. At all. Once again at only twenty five minutes in length at least it's short but I didn't enjoy it so what's the point? The character's are still awful, some of the decision making is awful, every second word is a profanity & why don't the zombies try to smash windows, open the doors or climb over fences which are barely six foot high? There's a little passage of dialogue which is pinched from Dawn of the Dead (1978) as the Big Brother house-mates ponder why the zombies seem to be coming to the Big Brother house. After episode three's dull ending there's anther cliffhanger style ending to episode four although it doesn't make me want to watch episode five at all really.

I have mentioned in all of the previous comments I have written for the other episodes & again here the cinematography is awful & I hate the way this looks. After complaining about the lack of gore this episode is a little better, the Davina McCall zombie is killed with a pole stuck through the back of her head, there's some blood splatter & a gory bit at the end when Patrick cuts a dead body up with a kitchen knife removing it's insides & there's also a severed hand seen too. But generally speaking it's still fairly tame, when Alex kills the zombie that has bitten her nothing is shown & when Riq kills her before she turns again absolutely nothing is shown. As a seasoned horror film fan I have not been impressed with the gore levels in this so far & you can't see half of it anyway because of the shaky cinematography.

Dead Set (#1.4) is another lacklustre episode to a clichéd, predictable & annoying series that I am glad I didn't spend any money on. Can't say I am looking forward to the fifth & final episode but I'll watch it out of commitment rather than anticipation, I mean I have come this far why give up now?