Dead again
On set of season two of cult zombie drama The Returned…
Before we start: spoilers ahead if you haven’t seen Season 1… There’s a chill in the air that has nothing to do with the mist, the looming mountains or the threat of snow in the thick grey clouds overhead. It’s more about the dead bodies strewn across the ground. When someone shouts, “A little more blood!” it’s all Lounge can do to keep from jumping on the first plane home. We’re deep among the pine forests over the town of Annecy in the Alpine foothills, watching a key scene in the second series of the superbly creepy and stylish French zombie drama The Returned.
Very loosely based on a 2004 film of the same name, the first series aired on Channel 4 in 2013 and detailed the return of the deceased in an unnamed French mountain town. The show eschewed gratuitous gore and cheap shocks as shattered families were awkwardly reunited, attempts to escape proved impossible and a crack in the town dam revealed a sunken town beneath the reservoir. Wrenchingly, it ended with the returned once more reclaimed, mysteriously compelled to trudge back off into the darkness having barely begun the process of reintegration into the community. Where do they go from here?
Before you ask, we can’t be too exact about the details: creator Fabrice Gobert and his team are as sensitive to spoilers as anyone toiling away on a certain series set in Westeros. Happily, a glass or two of vin rouge over lunch loosens tongues and there are a few things Lounge can confirm...
Character building
In season two, Berg, a mysterious architect (Laurent Lucas), arrives to solve the mystery of the leaking dam, and forms an uneasy partnership with Jérôme Séguret (Frédéric Pierrot), the father of twins Camille (Yara Pilartz) and Lena ( Jenna Thiam). Camille, one of the returned, has gone back whence she came, taking her mother with her and leaving her traumatised father and sister behind. Jérôme’s state of mind is reflected in the beard Pierrot has grown: straggly and disordered. And although the new eight-part series runs across several timelines, revealing the stories and motivations behind several of the returned, including serial killer Serge (Guillaume Gouix) and silent child Victor (played by the uncanny Swann Nambotin), the bulk of the action takes places six months after the events of season one.
“Finally – zombies in France!” gasps producer Caroline Benjo, who also worked on the 2004 movie. “We didn’t know it
was possible. Usually, the French can tell very realistic stories but not stories that are so fantastic.” Gobert – who both directs and writes the series – snatches a moment to explain the key changes he made to the original concept. The dead of the TV series were no longer to be treated as allegorical figures representing outsiders or, as some interpreted the zombies in the film, AIDS victims. “It’s more intimate and about the characters,” he says. “How they deal with their dead and an event that is simply fantastic. How people as normal as Jérôme deal with unnatural things.” (It’s a harder trick to pull off than it sounds: this year’s US remake foundered after one season.)
In the first (French) season, the sense of mystery was perpetuated by the characters – sometimes even the actors – learning the truth at the same pace as the viewers. “They were discovering progressively what was going to happen to them and enter into this excitement, curiosity and fear,” says Benjo. And if they objected? Sadly, on a series like The Returned, the ultimate sanction is off limits to the production team. “We can’t even threaten the ones who are pains by saying we will kill their characters,” she laughs. “They know they can come back!”
Enjoy the silence
Pierrot confesses to being one such actor, although he reassures TF that “if I have a big idea, I call Fabrice, but I generally try to avoid it because that would be awfully boring for him. But it’s a fantastic job.” He loves “to work in the detail”, as he puts it – and as if to illustrate his point, he produces a handwritten version of the day’s shooting script. “I write it out myself. I worked with Jean-Luc Godard [ on 1996’s For Ever Mozart] and he told me that when authors are writing, the idea goes down the neck, the shoulder, the arm and the pen. If you do that as an actor, it goes the other way, into the mind. You will know things and deeply understand them. Gobert and Godard, they are both masters.”
Clearly The Returned rewards close attention from actors as well as viewers. The series is only Gobert’s second project after Lights Out, a 2010 thriller that created a stir at Cannes. Yet although he projects an easy confidence and command on set while covering a dizzying number of bases, he’s an approachable figure who encourages input from cast and crew. This approach is still a novel one in French drama, says Benjo, where auteurs still tend to be placed on a pedestal.
“We have great actors who can express a lot with a look,” Gobert explains. “They don’t have to have a lot of good lines to be wonderful. More important is what the faces say. I love silences, I love people looking at each other, I love suspended time.” Time’s been standing still for the last two years, but now we’re ready to go back to The Returned. Wrap up warm…
“Zombies in France! Usually the French tell realistic stories but not stories that are so fantastic” Carol ine Benjo, prod ucer
ETA | autumn The Returned Season 2 will air on Channel 4 later this year.