USA TODAY International Edition
Dead reckoning: ‘ iZombie’ feeds on fun — and brains
It’s a reawakening for ‘ Buffy,’ ‘ Mars’ fans
No successful TV show stays dead for long. Eventually, someone finds a way to revise and revive every hit, sometimes blatantly, sometimes subtly. So even though CW’s iZombie is an enjoyable Night of the Living Dead detective mash- up based on Chris Roberson’s and Michael Allred’s comic book, you can be excused for thinking the real inspirations are Buffy the Vampire Slayer and, especially, Veronica Mars — the former TV home of iZombie cocreators Rob Thomas and Diane Ruggiero- Wright.
Hey, if former TV shows must walk among us, at least CW has chosen two deserving of reanimation.
In place of a dry- witted high school student, we now have medical resident Liv ( Rose McIv- er), whose wits are about to dry out before your eyes. Pretty, popular and sweetly ambitious, Liv lives a life “like the ending of Sixteen Candles” until she attends one bad party and wakes up as one of the quasi- dead.
Zombiehood robs Liv of her drive, perkiness and fiancé ( Robert Buckley). But it gets her a job as a medical examiner at the city morgue, where she can better feed her need for brains.
With admirable efficiency, Thomas and Ruggiero- Wright quickly supply the need- to- know details of their twist on the myth. Eating brains ( with lots of hot sauce) keeps Liv reasonably human — though it doesn’t stop her from going into “full- on zombie mode” when provoked. But those brains also impart a bit of the dead person’s memories, which can come in handy in the murder- solving business.
And there you have the benefit of the concept — for those who enjoy weekly mysteries — and the rub — for those who’d rather have something more off- center and, well, zombieish. It doesn’t take long for iZombie to settle into standard “damaged detective” mode, with Liv using her brain-ingested flashes to solve crimes under a psychic cover.
Sure, she’s initially reluctant. (“I’m having a hard enough time pretending I’m alive, let alone throwing a performance as a psychic into my repertoire.”) But she soon has her own small Scooby gang, made up of her morgue boss ( an amusingly chipper Rahul Kohli) and a young cop ( Malcolm Goodwin). Not to mention a zombie nemesis ( David Anders), which is one area where the story feels more Buffy than Veronica.
On the bright side, in a TV universe that leans to the grim, there’s a nice, light approach at work here. Despite the brain eating, producers have imbued the opening episodes with a sly sense of humor ( a blend of sarcasm and bemusement) that McIver sells well. And they’ve avoided the sense of hopelessness the concept could have provoked by dangling the promise of a cure and by allowing Liv to find a new purpose for her life.
May it be a long and entertaining one.