Black Summer

I’m not sure why I’m doing this now, as Black Summer dropped on Netflix back in April and, as with all zombie content, I had to watch it there and then.  However, something about the title seems appropriate as we reach the back end of August.  No, it’s not a spin-off of Dear White People, whose third season has just launched, the viewing of which I am saving for when I’ve bought a big telly for my new flat.  My choice is more to do with the tempestuous weather that everyone has been moaning about.  Brits have evolved to be waterproof as it’s almost always raining here, so I’m not sure why one globally warmed day of 38 degrees would lead us to expect constant sunshine until the schools go back.

Summer 2019 is black due to the gathering storm clouds that seem to signal an afternoon shower each day as some part of new European rainy season.  From my office window I can spectate as workers clad optimistically in summer dresses and t-shirts alike sprint across pavements while a good old bucketing-down catches people unawares.  I know I shouldn’t delight in others’ suffering but getting caught in the rain (along with piña coladas) is something that truly affirms your humanity: the planet has literally wetted you.  Plus, I must get it from my father – he used to arrive early to pick me up from my Sixth Form job at Waitrose before I could drive, simply because my shift ended half an hour after closing time and he would derive endless entertainment from watching affluent potential shoppers stride towards the automatic doors, only to respond with outraged incredulity when they were denied entry to their favourite providore and therefore forced to forego a top-up shop consisting mostly of artisan cheese and fine wines.

Let’s make no bones about it: I don’t like summer.  In fact, a zombie apocalypse would probably improve my ability to withstand the aestival months.  I would like to blame London for this.  It’s the worst place in the world when hot, mostly as it was built in Victorian times for the damp climate mentioned above (though, over a hundred years later, they’re still building most of it).  The morning Tube, as unpleasant as it already is, takes on a new level of odorous odiousness: once you’ve spotted one sweat patch, you suddenly realise that everyone’s every crevice is proffering its own wet spot to any casually observing eye.  I may scoff into my novel, but I secretly know that the tickling in the small of my back is from my own sweat beads dashing down my spine to pool and fester in the dark dankness of my crack.  And there it stays for the whole working day and whatever else I am doing with my evening (watching boxsets).

Londoners do two things in the sun.  The first is to find a patch of grass, regardless of its proximity to the heavy traffic of a thoroughfare.  The second is to drink on it.  I don’t enjoy exhaust fumes, nor is it fun to look for somewhere to wee after your third cider, all while wishing you’d put more effort in at the gym as your body stretches before you like some squidgily marshmallow-like dough.  So, once the longest day has gone past, the chill in the air returns and the leaves start to fall, a certain joy fills me as I know we are approaching my favourite time of year.  For some reason, autumn carries with it the most nostalgia.  A breeze can suddenly evoke the exact moment in Year 10 when I realised that other people were stupid.  Factor in the bonus that each autumn brought another year of school: older, wiser, no cooler, but with a new pencil case.  The geek in me loved going back because I enjoyed all the writing and the learning and such.

Which is why some writing is happening now, as a hobby.  I started this blog about TV shows.  I should probably therefore spend a couple of passages actually tackling this week’s programme instead of sharing half-baked yet whimsically charming reflections on the passing of time.  Regular readers will know of my love for the zombie genre.  Fear The Walking Dead remains one of my most-read posts, while The Walking Dead and Korean treasure, Kingdom (킹덤), have of course been covered.  One show I’ve seen some of but not included here is Z Nation, another serial tackling the undead apocalypse.  Its crime?  Too many LOLs  I exist in perpetual fear of a zombie takeover, so I really struggle to see the funny side.  I don’t mind dark humour in the face of annihilation, but the viewer in me wants the genuine threat treated seriously.  The point is, Z Nation misses the mark slightly, but my scant research has revealed the Black Summer is its origin story.  Let’s not hold this against the show though.

Our action opens in an unnamed suburb, some weeks after breakout.  Enough confusion still exists about what is going on, and things are never really explained.  We only glimpse the unfolding of disorientating events through seemingly unrelated characters, all desperately trying to survive (with varying levels of success).  The characterisation has been accused of shallowness, but I’m going to describe it as subtle – you’re deliberately left conflicted about who is good and who is bad, bringing to life the fact that trusting others while the undead chase you can lead either to salvation or betrayal, but you’ll only find out when it’s too late.

The suburban streets in the sunshine take on a claustrophobic air, with peril around every repetitive corner, separated individuals hopelessly searching for loved ones.  Tension builds around rumours of sanctuary, yearning for reunion and the constant risk of zombies and bad people.  The eight episodes stumble forward, arrhythmically switching perspectives and pace, though we culminate in a series of gun battles which are equal parts thrilling climax and video game fodder.

For devotees of the genre, this is a worthwhile watch.  Its fresh-enough approach avoids the pitfalls of what we have seen before, but there’s a sense a bigger vision is lacking behind all the death and destruction.  I’d happily sit through a second series, but the internet is not forthcoming with details of any recommissioning.  I promise you genuine chills from Black Summer’s flesh-eating walkers, especially in the mix of the show’s concerning plausibility.  But I realise the most alarming image you may have from this week’s post is that of my sweaty crack.

Kingdom (킹덤)

Well, a lot of people filled their boots with the Shipwrecked post, didn’t they?  Learning nothing from that runaway success, this week I’m veering recklessly to the other end of the TV spectrum.  We’ve not chatted about my love for zombies since both The Walking Dead and Fear The Walking Dead (the latter a spin-off of the former) were subjected to my sardonic snarkiness months and months ago.  So, brace yourself for the flesh-eating undead.  But that’s not the only swap we’ve made.  Replace a Pacific Island with the Korean peninsula.  Switch bikini-clab British Millennials for medieval Koreans.  And sub inarticulate youths saying “you know, kind of like” for a violent onslaught from the Korean language, with subtitles straight out of the How To Speak Archaic English textbook and, ladies and gentlemen, you’ve got yourself Kingdom.

But, as always, due to a grave inability to take anything seriously, I jest.  Kingdom is literally the best thing I have seen on Netflix in ages.  I’m not even sorry about writing such a weak sentence as that previous one – it doesn’t need dressing up.  I’m still in a state of excitement, and I finished all six episodes about a week ago.  I’m looking at the clock as if it’s going to tell me when series two will come into my life and provide me with equal measures of horror and entertainment.  Let’s be honest, I get both of these in my office, but very little of this comes from historical Koreans, so it’s nice to have a change, isn’t it?

The bit where I tell you what it’s all about will now follow, but again, we’re going for a certain laziness of language, as the rest is verging on highbrow (historical, foreign language) and we need to average things out to keep the majority happy.  So, there’s this prince, right?  His dad, the king, is on his deathbed, yeah, but the prince is being kept away by the new queen, his stepmother.  She’s expecting a baby by the old king, so she needs her husband to survive until the birth in order to secure succession.  She’s part of a clan who are hungry for power, so let’s just say there’s a rather Westerosi approach to this whole throne ownership business.  Her clan’s devious attempts to keep the king alive are what cause the inevitable zombie outbreak, while dismissing a physician back into the countryside is what spreads the pestilence to the peasants beyond the palace.  Meanwhile, our poor old prince also has to flee for his life on a quest to find out the truth.  He’s about to find out it’s not so easy being a prince in zombie-riddle medieval Korea.

What sets this apart, though, is bloody all of it.  But let’s distil from this two of the main TV-viewing features upon which you can feast your eyes.  The first is that every shot is exquisitely cinematic in its beauty.  From ancient palace buildings to dramatic landscapes, the visuals’ lushness is exceeded only by the ancient costumes.  You’ll wonder who ever thought those big hats were practical for soldiers, or question how warm so many layers of silk can be, but you’ll always end up impressed.  Somehow, this aesthetic doesn’t distract from the drama; instead, it becomes the perfect frame for the zombie fare, which often needs further theming to become plausible.  Having been to modern South Korea, I’m not sure the impact would have been the same among the grey buildings of Seoul, evidence of the whole place getting smashed in during the 1950s’ Korean War.

The second main setter-aparter is the incredible dramatic tension.  A zombie origin story is always fraught, as you, the viewer, sprawled on your cushions and shoving snacks in your face, know full well that doom is due while the characters all too slowly put two and two together and come up with some sort of denial of the epidemic chasing them down country lanes (yes, these zombies run, fast).  Skip this bit if you don’t want any spoiler content whatsoever, but one element of the zombie mythology in Kingdom has to be mentioned: the undead are only active in the dark.  Cue limitless possibilities of the sun setting, corpses starting to twitch, silly Korean magistrates being inefficient in their jobs and all hell being unleashed.  Conversely, you know your beloved main characters just have to survive each night before the daytime brings a bit of a breather.  A whole episode got so tense, the build and build to nightfall so domineering, that I had to press pause and pace about the room a bit to restore all sense of perspective to myself.

Alongside all of this, Kingdom finds time to make comparisons between the haves and have nots in society: a sort of socialist message to accompany the consumption of flesh, if you will.  The nobility are repeatedly shown to cock up their handling of an issue of national importance, while our royal hero, the prince, also learns that the peasant fodder bearing the brunt of the infestation don’t actually deserve to be eaten alive.  It’s funny how Brexit bleeds into everything, isn’t it?  (Or is that a bit of a reach this time?)  It seems that any dishonour towards a royal, however, does come with the alarming punishment of one’s whole family being annihilated.  What a great way to target crime.  The next time someone swipes your iPhone on a moped, you can rest assured that they won’t just be found and jailed, they won’t just be executed, but their whole family tree will be erased from the earth.

I’ll finish by saying that I don’t care if you don’t like subtitles.  You should have tried harder at school if you can’t read fast enough.  Stepping outside of the English language into Kingdom allows you to access one of the most compelling additions to the zombie canon in quite a few years.  Sure, it’s based on a comic book, like The Walking Dead etc, but it’s set apart by its uniqueness in the Western TV marketplace.  It’s also endlessly gratifying to watch the various extras really go for it in their performances and energetically give something extra of themselves, become extra extras.  Just remember, don’t come for me when you reach the cliffhanging end of series one, because it was me who opened your tiny mind to the intense tension of Kingdom.

The Walking Dead

I don’t know if I can carry on with The Walking Dead.  It doesn’t give a lot back.  I’m persevering because, when it’s at its best, it’s truly among the most impactful television I have ever seen.  But series eight, which has just returned from its mid-season break, is a gruelling and gruesome onslaught of hopelessness.

I mean, who has a mid-season break anyway?  With the average American series over twenty episodes, compared to Brits calling it a day after about six or seven, I realise I don’t have a leg to stand on.  But where are the other mid-season breaks in adult life?  I’m very much in favour of bringing some sort of half term to working life, otherwise it’s just endless, isn’t it?

But anyway, they’ve had a good innings.  Who’d have thought such an incredibly graphic and violently gory drama would attract such international acclaim?  There was a slight head start from its roots in a series of popular comic books, but I don’t know anything about these really, so I won’t wade in with my views (though a lack of knowledge has never really stopped me before).  In short, the initial premise is that a man wakes up from a coma to find that a zombie apocalypse has taken hold on the USA.  Cue eight seasons of struggles to stay alive.

And what a man.  Rick Grimes is the Southern sheriff whose sweat-soaked shoulders end up bearing the weight of leadership: he finds himself the de facto head of a ragtag band of survivors.  Around him, there develops a cult of Rick.  He seems to be able to keep people safe.  Repeatedly, the characters end up in nice new communities: planting a few crops (they seem to favour beans), sticking spikes through zombies’ heads at their perimeter fence to avoid being overrun, teaching the children how to cope (mixed ability, of course).  This obviously lowers the scope for drama, so it never lasts long.  After a while, you begin secretly to wish it will all go terribly wrong.  After a bit longer, you realise this is inevitable and merely bide your time until the undead stream into whichever compound and thin out the cast a bit.

However, Rick doesn’t go around mansplaining how to kill a zombie to a bunch of terrified mother hens.  He’s epic, but the strong female characters run rings around him.  Michonne, Sasha, Tara, Rosita and Maggie are just some of the bad motherf*ckers keeping his show on the road.  For me, though, the most impressive is Carol.  While every cast member of The Walking Dead grows and develops, Carol’s beginnings as a brow-beaten housewife couldn’t be further from where she ends up.  The first episode of series five, No Sanctuary, is proof of her undeniable badassery.  It’s one of the greatest things I have ever seen.  Take a bow, Melissa McBride.

This is what happens to Rick’s people.  They get tough.  And then they come across other people that are softer, and dominate them, or they come across other tough people, and fight with them.  This seems to be the rut we are stuck in.  With each series, more times passes since the apocalypse.  The undead might be more decayed than before, but it’s the humans who are even more monstrous.

I’ve already covered the spin-off show, Fear The Walking Dead, where I mentioned that the constant threat of death makes the drama more intense.  Your favourite could be killed at any juncture.  Never are they more at risk than at the huge storyline climaxes that have punctuated the start and end of each season (and each mid-season for that matter).

It’s these peaks that have been more like troughs in recent series.  In an effort to avoid being predictable and allowing its main characters to seem immortal, The Walking Dead will desperately cull a few of them, just to keep you on your toes.  But these deaths feel like betrayals, particularly when they don’t take the storylines anywhere.  There’s a balance to be struck here, but the striking has failed to hit the mark like it used to.

I should have seen the end in sight when a tiger appeared in the second episode of the seventh season.  Shiva might also be in the comics, but this wild animal’s introduction in The Well, obeying its human masters, shattered many illusions for me.  The dead coming back to life?  I’ll buy it.  But a tiger that knows which people to maul based on the community they come from?  Come on!

Countless friends have abandoned ship, complaining that the storylines are too drawn out, that there is too much build up before the release of any action.  But then series eight has been constant battle action, and that doesn’t feel right either.  When you’ve invested so much in a show, you feel it owes you something.  I’m sticking with it in case I can work out what I feel it owes me.  Maybe I’ll know when I see it.  I don’t want to be a fan that expects everything to be done just to please them, so I’m bearing in mind that this is still one of the best shows out there (which I seem to say every single week on here…).

Given my love of trash (Bromans, Survival Of The Fittest, Geordie Shore), I’ll tolerate a lot of things.  I’ve come to terms with how much the cast perspire in the 100% Georgia humidity.  I don’t mind that so many of them seem to be British, which makes me constantly scrutinise their accents for an accidental syllable of Home Counties pronunciation.  I don’t mind that the rest were in The Wire.  I could handle The Cell (series seven, episode three) when Daryl is held captive and tortured with the same song on loop (ruin your day here).  And finally, I can handle the current storyline doldrum.

The reason for this is series two, episode seven, Pretty Much Dead Already.  It ends with an epiphany.  It makes you question all you thought you knew about zombies, about humans and about humanity.  It turns on its head the unwritten rules of TV.  I felt like the sofa had collapsed away from under me and I was freefalling into a new world.

I’m just waiting for that to happen again.