Chasing Zombies

Zombies are traditionally uncomplicated. Sometimes they shamble, sometimes they run. Generally they want to devour your flesh, although sometimes they like to shake it up a little by feasting only on your brain. (They're the gourmets of the zombie population.)

Leave it to the French, though, to put a bit of an existential spin on the whole walking dead pop culture phenomenon by making a television series where the dearly departed return from the grave looking to pick up their lives where they left off, reconnect with loved ones or maybe begin indulging in some of the nasty habits - such as murder - in which they indulged before they shuffled off this mortal coil.

In The Returned, premiering soon on pay-TV channel Studio, the residents of a small French town are shocked and stunned when several people believed dead for years simply...well, return.

“We put the zombie theme back into some kind of reality,” says Pierre Perrier, who plays Simon, who comes back to find that Adele, the woman he was going to marry, has given birth to his daughter Chloe but has also found new love with another man, Thomas.

“One of the biggest themes of the show is this fantastic scenario but it has a very real effect on the people. We managed to do something new with something fantastic like the undead, something very realistic about what would really happen if you opened your door in the morning and you saw your dead father or your dead mother or your dead little brother…we wanted to show a realistic reaction to that.”

That's not to say that The Returned is simply some moody kitchen-sink melodrama where a few of the major players happen to be zombies. While it would be unfair to reveal just what happens as the first season of The Returned progresses, let's just say that some mysteries are unravelled while others deepen. (And fear not, a second season is currently in the works.)

The show has proven a critical and commercial success in France and internationally (UK and US remakes are reportedly in development), and Perrier is quick to attribute the quality of The Returned to its producers and directors but primarily its screenwriters, especially series creator Fabrice Gobert.

“Fabrice is great,” Perrier says. “He really created a close atmosphere between the writing team and all the actors, which is difficult because there are a lot of actors. He was continually rewriting the script, every day and every night, then in the mornings he'd come and say 'I have a new idea' or 'What do you think of this?' He has great humanity and he managed to keep it all very real. There was a lot of money and a lot of expectation involved, but he managed to keep his own very strong idea of the show intact. He fought a lot to keep some ideas in, and I think it was a great success.”

“It was a long process writing the story, with five or six people working over maybe five or six years just to get it right. The subject of zombies and undead people are so overused in other movies and TV shows that now they're almost a non-serious subject, and I think The Returned takes it somewhere very realistic in a French cinematic way, very 'auteur'.”

The French film industry has embraced genres like horror and fantasy with gusto, but Perrier feels that The Returned breaks new ground in terms of the country's small-screen produce.

“I think the success is because it represents a new French identity,” he says. “France hasn't been able until the last two or three years to make good TV shows that it can export abroad. We do this in cinema, but we don't usually have the balls to do it on TV, we normally stay classic. But France is growing slowly, and this is hopefully our time.”

As far as his character Simon is concerned, Perrier says he was initially described as “a classic romantic”.

“All sad, always in black, big hair, looking desperately for his wife and child,” says Perrier. “Like some classic character out of literature but there is a twist: Fabrice told me at the beginning 'Maybe he is not so innocent'.”

Indeed, just as there is mystery surrounding the return of Simon, there is also mystery surrounding the circumstances of his death. Did he take his own life? Was there something more sinister involved? Or something more banal?

“If he actually killed himself, then he was somebody depressed and sad,” muses Perrier. “Maybe he tried to get away on his wedding day because he was crazy, or he was a little bit sick, so he went from being this classical character to being some kind of pervert narcissist, playing with other people's feelings.”

Regardless, Simon's return plays havoc with the life Adele has created in the years since. To their daughter Chloe, she refers to Simon as “an angel”...but is he?

“Well, who is entirely an angel and who is entirely a devil?” says Perrier. “It's the same for all characters. I think every character in the series has their own questions and anger and joy. It's almost impossible to imagine what it would be like to be this guy and come back. Can you imagine it? You find your wife with another man and your child already grown up. It's just impossible. There was a lot of ambiguity about the character and I loved that about him. I mean, with Thomas - Adèle's new husband - Simon's going to be a devil, and with his child, he's going to be an angel. It's just the character.”