Dead Set -- TV Review

4:14 PM PDT 10/22/2010 by Barry Garron

Suppose flesh-eating zombies were everywhere, and the "Big Brother” house was one of the few — or maybe the only — place of refuge. Now there’s a dilemma. Would you cast your fate with the self-obsessed oddballs who were carefully selected for their propensity to bicker or would you take your chances with the zombies?

If you did choose to hole up inside the “Big Brother” house, how long do you think it would be before the artificial walls crumble and society — or the fun-house mirror version of it portrayed on reality shows — comes to an end? Those are some of the questions entertained by Charlie Brooker’s semiserious, semihumorous weeklong series, an odd mixture of parody and putrid violence that is neither as suspenseful nor as clever as it pretends to be.