If you feel like I do about the TV show Big Brother then the idea of the set being invaded by an army of flesh-eating zombies sounds like a great idea. The news that UK show host Davina McCall is one of the victims is a definite bonus!

This is all part of Dead Set, a new five part mini-series coming soon to TV channel E4. Dead Set is written by journalist and comedy writer Charlie Brooker. According to Brooker:

“Dead Set isn’t an out-and-out comedy, but an unashamedly populist horror-thriller with blackly comic undertones. Think 24 with zombies. And housemates. And gore.”

Brooker quotes Romero’s 1978 Dawn of the Dead as inspiration, pointing out that the BB house is an aspirational symbol for today’s society in much the same the shopping mall was in the 1970s.

No official word as to when the programme will be shown, if you find out before I do please let me know in the comments. Until then, here’s a trailer:

The decisive factor in the 2008 US elections might turn out to be the undead! Producer Russ Streiner (Night of the Living Dead 1968) and writer John A. Rosso (Night of the Living Dead 2006) have launched a site called Send a Zombie to Congress.

According to the site:

“Tired of being mocked, tired of seeing the country go to hell in a handbasket because of the brain-dead policies of the George W. Bush presidency, the zombies are going after the fat-cats who aided and abetted his colossal blunders. From now on, until Obama is righteously elected, they have vowed to dine only on the flesh of these greedy, self-serving, hypocritical lobbyists and legislators.”

As you can see, the site is unashamedly partisan. The question is, will the support of the zombie faction be a benefit or a liability to Obama?

When I was a student we played a game called “Killer”. This was a 24/7 pseudo roleplay game where the objective was to “kill” other players “for real”, for example by squirting them with a water pistol or dropping a “poison” sweet into their beer. It was great fun.

Now USA Today reports that students in US colleges have taken the idea one step further and created Humans vs Zombies (HvZ).

HvZ is another 24/7 pseudo roleplay. The zombies – identified by headbands – try to “tag” human players, turning them into more zombies. Eventually there are just a tiny number of human players armed with nerf guns and balled up socks trying to ward off the hordes of zombie students.

Wht did we never think of that?