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TV review

Published Monday 3 November 2008 at 15:15 by Harry Venning

E4 served up some serious Halloween wish fulfilment by sending an army of rabid zombies off to the Big Brother House, where they feasted on the show’s bovine audience, production team, housemates real and fictional, and even presenter Davina McCall.

Charlie Brooker’s comedy horror serial Dead Set provided compulsive, if stomach-turning, viewing over five weekday evenings. And the tension, hysteria, jokes, thrills and blood-spurting fun never let up for a minute.

The choice of the Big Brother house proved an inspired setting for a zombie siege, being hermetically sealed, brim full of appalling characters just waiting to be eviscerated and offering multiple viewpoints from which to witness all the cannibalistic carnage.

As a parody of Big Brother’s excesses Dead Set was spot on. “It’s the new housemate!” shriek the contestants delightedly, as Jaime Winstone’s blood-soaked production assistant staggers in from the apocalypse outside. Understandably traumatised into silence by events, she is interrogated by the contestants; “Are you a mong?” sneers the muscle-bound, loud-mouthed bully.

“How was I coming over?” asks the self-obsessed transvestite.

“Does this mean we’re not on telly anymore?” whines the sexy blonde.

Davina, incidentally, is a very good sport indeed and was wholly convincing both as immaculately turned out TV presenter and as an undead monster with human flesh hanging out of her mouth. Come to think of it, she was possibly more convincing as the latter.

Britannia High is a musical comedy set in a London performing arts college. Which isn’t any sort of high school, of course, but the show has had the title foisted upon it by the irresistible success of High School Musical and its sequels.

Younger viewers lured in by this cynical and transparent ruse won’t be too disappointed, as Britannia High is every bit as slick and shallow. The characters are cardboard cut-outs, their relationships superficial and their dialogue trite. Which is all a bit disappointing, given that the script is by Jonathan Harvey.

However, the show comes alive with its musical numbers, which are executed with such brio and imagination that the drama around them looks like the flabbiest of fillings.

Inevitably, the series starts at the beginning of a new academic year, giving the opportunity to introduce a fresh flounce of drama students, including fish out of water Lauren (Georgina Hagen), catty rival Claudine (Sapphire Elia), and odd couple mates Jez and BB (Matthew James Thomas and Marcquelle Ward) who get off to a stilted start as DJs on the school radio station.

“Just talk to each other,” encourages a teacher. “Say whatever comes into your head.” Which, in the light of recent events, isn’t going to get her a producer’s job at the BBC anytime soon.

There are very many good reasons to watch Little Dorrit, but two of the best of them are Alan Armstrong, who plays both of the loathsome Flintwich twins. The brothers are involved in some nefarious, if yet unspecified, scheming to do with the Marshalsea debtors prison.

But so is everyone else, it seems - Andy Serkis’ murderer Rigaud, Maxine Peake’s malevolently manipulative Miss Wade, Freema Agyeman’s resentful servant Tattycoram, to name but a few. Matthew MacFayden and Claire Foy play the story’s morally upright hero and heroine, Arthur and Amy, but it doesn’t look half as much fun.

DETAILS

Dead Set - E4, Monday, October 27-Friday 31, 10pm

Britannia High - ITV1, Sunday, October 26, 6pm

Little Dorrit - BBC1, Sunday, October 26, 8pm, Thursday 30, 8.30pm

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