REALITY Z
Dying to be on telly
UK/US Netflix, streaming now Showrunner Cláudio Torres Cast Ravel Andrade, Carla Ribas,
Ana Hartmann, Luellem de Castro
Way back in 2008, Charlie Brooker’s five-part horror-comedy series Dead Set saw zombies overrun the Big Brother house. Now, when a real pandemic has genuinely made leaving the house seem terrifying, a Brazilian remake revisits the idea: here, the zombie-infested reality show has been dubbed Olympus, but beneath the ancient Greek trappings, it’s essentially the same show as BB.
And for the first five episodes, Reality Z is the same show as Dead Set. Clueless housemates clash with the slavering undead and producers face down flesh-hungry talent; it’s all very slick, and there’s plenty of gore, but without the thrill of seeing behind the scenes of a real TV show – Brooker’s original featured the actual Big Brother house, and Davina McCall – it doesn’t feel as urgent.
In its final five episodes, though, Reality Z mutates from a remake into a sequel, as a new group of survivors decides that the Olympus studio would be a great place to ride out the apocalypse. The satire gets darker, as a scheming politician uses the show’s cameras to decide who gets to live or die, and everyone else gets sucked into watching the drama from the gallery, as if it’s really an entertainment show and not a fight for survival.
The thing is, the plot plays out in exactly the same way. No matter how many zombie hordes or desperate stragglers show up, the same patterns of selfishness and betrayal get repeated over and over. What was left of the playfulness of the original seeps away, replaced with crushing bleakness. Is humanity really doomed because of our collective awfulness? Maybe, but who wants to hear that right now? Sarah Dobbs
Sabrina Sato, who plays Reality Z host Divina, was herself a housemate in Big Brother Brasil 3 back in 2003.
Clueless housemates clash with the undead