A bit of a mess: Channel 4’s Generation Z reviewed

In the second of this week’s two episodes of Generation Z (Sunday and Monday), a teenage girl called Finn wondered why her friend Kelly was so distracted and tearful. As a well-informed type, Finn applied the principle of Occam’s razor and decided that Kelly must be pregnant. In this case, though, the simplest explanation definitely wasn’t the right one. What was ailing Kelly was that her nan had tried to stab her with a large kitchen knife prior to feasting on her flesh – until a male schoolfriend turned up, shot her nan with a crossbow and hid the body in the woods.

In some British towns, all this might have been something of a one-off. But not in the fictional Danbury, where an army lorry had recently shed its load: a gas that causes old people to develop a sudden zomboid taste for blood. Now, 15 residents of the Sunny Rise retirement home are also rampaging through the woods, chomping on cockapoos and their owners alike.

Not only that, but any victims who don’t die are infected with the same dietary requirements. The cockapoo sadly didn’t make it – what with being comprehensively disembowelled – but its middle-aged owner was last seen munching on her mother’s brains.

Generation Z is written and directed by Ben Wheatley, whose CV includes both horror and comedy. According to interviews, his plan here was to combine the two – but so far the comedy isn’t easy to discern, unless we’re meant to regard the whole thing as hilariously daft, which I don’t think is the idea at all.

Indeed, the show seems heavy – and sometimes heavy-handed – with perhaps contradictory metaphor. On the one (heavy) hand, the baby boomers are no longer just symbolically sucking the blood of younger generations.