In the Flesh - From the Walking Dead to the Walking Oppressed

This post was originally posted on my old website on June 8th, 2013.

If you are a Walking Dead fan, or just a apocalyptic/dystopia fan - and you missed In the Flesh on BBC America these last few days - then keep checking that station for reruns!

Back in March, my sister Jen, who lives in England, was gushing about a new T.V. mini-series she was enjoying. We are both huge Walking Dead fans, but the only information she gave me was that the 3-episode-long series was zombie-related. She didn't even give me a title!

So I emailed her back asking how it was she could recommend something - yet not even tell me the name of it? Her response was that it was just a small British series and that it would never come to American T.V.

WTF?

Hello, have you not heard of BBC America? Home of The Graham Norton Show - and the new super-fantastic Orphan Black (Two reasons to watch Orphan Black - 1. Tatiana. 2. Maslany. OMG this woman is good, as Sarah, Helena, Beth, Allison, Cosima - and a whole heap of other characters in the show.

Season 1 just ended - but you have until next year to find it, watch it and catch up on what you missed. DO IT! Tatiana Maslany ROCKS!!

OK, so back to In the Flesh. It was probably during the season finale of Orphan Black that I saw the trailer advertising In the Flesh (yes, Jen had finally shared the title of the show with me!). I set the DVR.

So imagine The Walking Dead - our little group of survivors that we all know and love so well - you know, the ones we are rooting for.

Now imagine someone coming up with a vaccine that reverses the zombie effect - sort of. They can’t do much about the yellow eyes, or the pale skin, but throw in a pair of contact lenses and a little stage make-up and voila! you are integrated back into society.

Now imagine a small English town, where everyone knows each other, and where the locals formed a die-hard militia similar to our heroes on Walking Dead. How do they feel about the return of their former family and friends who until recently had risen from the dead and were eating peoples brains?

All of a sudden, the people who had been protecting the town from the zombies are the bigots/bad guys.

On top of all that, we discover that the only people infected were the ones who were already dead - and buried.

So how did the main character, Kieran, contract the diesease? He had committed suicide. So on top of all the civil rights type questions/traumas this series poses over these new outcasts/minorites/others - his family is not just dealing with the issues of having a former zombie for a son - but also dealing with the emotional trauma of facing a loved who had recently killed himself. Throw into this mix, a sister who had joined, and was a die hard member of, the local militia group (think female Daryl Dixon).

How do his parents deal with all of this? Well one way, is to make him sit at the dinner table and pretend to eat (the former zombies - aka 'the partially diseased' in this show, cannot eat anything) - pretend to eat all his former favorite foods that his mum insists on cooking (also by the way foods his sister - who can eat - hates!)

Could it be any better!?

Oh yes it could - once you add in the fact that the kid was already a social outcast in the small town due to the fact he was gay. A gay, former-zombie dealing with the fall out of from both killing himself and having nightmarish flashbacks of eating people brains when he had no control over the infection.

This is a must see for me.

The 3 part series ends tonight on BBC America at 10 pm Eastern. I can’t wait! I am hoping to the powers that be that the finale does not disappoint!