The Returned (French supernatural drama on Channel 4)

Anyone watching this? Saw the first three episodes over the weekend. Small town in the French alps, afflicted with various tragedies over the years, where the victims of those tragedies just turn up several years later and start going back to their normal lives. Creepy devil child, dismembered dogs, stabby serial attacker, vague Twin Peaks vibe. I'm on board and intrigued.

Yeah was going to bring it up here. This is v good imo. Nice soundtrack by Mogwai too. Lovely night-time light and backdrops and stuff all the way through.

Couple people on Twitter talked this up over the weekend and I got interested.

Likewise, really enjoying this. It's a 'remake' (in a loose sense, as far as I can tell) of a film also called Les Revenants ('They Came Back') from 2004, which I think was mentioned on a thread about variations on the zombie myth a while ago.

Loving the way it's shot and paced; very slow and ruminative, which lots of emphasis on emotional reactions. Great casting of the red-haired sisters. Soundtrack very nice and subtle; I'm almost tempted to buy the album of it.

So many questions after three episodes: what's with the stomach-eating? Who is the little boy? How long has he been 'returned'? What's with the reservoir level falling?

The little boy is a bit different isn't he? Like he seemed to cause the bus crash - is he even "returned"? I think he's meant to be something really sinister.

I vacillate between thinking he's really sinister and really sweet. The fact that the bus crash was four years ago and he doesn't appear to have aged suggests he's either been 'returned' for ages, or else he is something different, aye.

It's not just the bus crash people are returning from though, like Simon got hit by (or jumped in front of) a car - there's the wife of the old guy who killed himself, the dodgy killer guy whose pal owns the bar.

What was the thing with all the flies on it under the sink that Lena's mum discovered?

Yeah, people are returning from different incidents over a long time-spell - 30 years for the old guy's wife, 4 for Camille, 10 for Simon, presumably 7 for the serial killer dude. But they've all returned at the same time, apart, possibly, from Victor.

I thought that was a dead possum or something (I know you don't get possums in France...); certainly a small-to-medium furry animal, with its stomach pulled out.

The thing with all the flies on it appeared to be a dog's head, possibly the same dog that the bar manager found on a meat hook and later attacked him. Weird that she just left it there and went about her business, but then I suppose she's got a lot on her mind.

Glad people are enjoying this anyway. Agree it's amazingly filmed, every outdoor shot is a thing of beauty.

Love the feeling of being at the beginning of an awesome TV series by the way, so many mysterious threads winding around.

Yeah I guess it could be some kind of cyclical thing that happens with the water in the reservoir etc.

The guy who runs The Helping Hand seems kind of suspicious too, like I get the sense we're not meant to trust him.

xpost so is Camille responsible for the dog's head?

I'd forgotten about the dog attack. The C4 announcer last night did say "watch it again on 4OD; you'll be surprised how much you missed!" So I might.

Loving this show ATM.

i like the subtitling too - it's not always a literal translation but it often works better

This is the first subtitled thing on one of the old four channels in a long time, isn't it? Post The Killing etc I think it's a really interesting move - you can't watch this in the same way as you would a UK or US drama, with your iPhone or iPad in your hand, distractedly tweeting along, listening but not necessarily watching with 100% attention. I think it's definitely making me watch in a different way.

I thought that maybe the lesbian catwoman nurse was pregnant when she was stabbed by the serial killer dude, and Victor was her fetus, returned. But I guess everyone else seems to be returning at the same age they disappeared?

Visually, it seems that "Let the Right One In" was a huge influence on the cinematographer - a lot of the same subtle lighting tricks.

But yeah - this is really great three episodes in.

it's a cool gimmick that they subtitle the ads with french.

Did Lucy, the girls stabbed in the first episode, definitely die?

Yeah, I loved the ads in the first add break of the first episode, which were in French!

Lucy was still alive when they removed her from the underpass, which considering she'd been lying there all night with multiple stab wounds and a chewed liver is weird in its own right. Last thing I heard she was still alive but I can't remember if the police were then talking about it being a murder.

esp loved them subtitling the lyrics to "Get Lucky" with French

They always refer to a 'serial killer', but there's not been mention of who else he killed? Only the attack on Julie and now Lucy?

I've just seen that it's been re-made by ABC in the States as "The Resurrection." I hate kneejerk "the damned Americans remake everything and it's going to suck" stuff, but something about this makes me nervous...

This is very good.

Placeholder for when I've watched all three episodes currently on 4od. ITT are we doing no spoilers and what broadcast schedule would we be doing that by if we are?

I think it's only airing in the UK at the moment, on Sunday nights at 9pm, Channel 4. Seems like spoilers after the initial airing are generally acceptable in rolling TV threads around here?

This sounds really good. C'mon you god damned torrent sites, deliver!

i love this show, it gets stranger and stranger and i really cant predict whats going to happen in future episodes. great and gripping tv drama. it doesnt abide by normal tv cliches either, like when the parents find camille back in their house they dont cry and hug her and fall to their knees like most characters in tv dramas would. they just clam up and are speechless and dont know what to do. makes it more credible and chilling really.

Found a copy of original French season through, um, alternate means. After two episodes I'm all in on this - I'll try to keep in sync with the thread. Loving the uneasiness in this and the Mogwai soundtrack goes with the atmosphere like Carpenter/Howarth.

Rewatched the first episode last night to see if we could pick up on anything we'd missed, but I don't think we did, especially. We were rapt throughout again though, which is kind of remarkable given that we only watched it the other week and we're now on episode 3 in the regular broadcast cycle; it just cemented the chronology of things a little more.

When Lucy was left in the underpass after being stabbed they showed a dog wandering in and sniffing around her, so when the police said someone had tried to eat her liver I assumed it was the dog. But the police assumed it was the attacker, and then said the attack seven years before was exactly the same, liver eating n all. So was the dog just a red herring?

Third episode seem to have the most "what the... what was... wait..." moments. The thing in the bin, the (imagined?) scissor attack, a reflection in the mirror towards the end, the demon child's drawings (one of them clearly referring to Toni and Serge: a large man holding a shotgun and someone next to him holding a knife).

What was the reflection in the mirror?

The scissor attack thing was really weird and hard to explain.

Towards the end Claire was in the bathroom and you briefly saw a reflection when she opened the bathroom cabinet; you saw it again when she shut it and it was obviously er jerome or pierre, i just wondered if it was someone different the first time. Maybe not but I will check.

I was watching that closely expecting a shock but as far as I remember it was nothing first, then her husband. Could be wrong though.

The bar manager's dead brother is the stabby guy, right? But then he also appeared to turn into the creepy kid as well.

yeah whether he turned into the kid or what happened in that scene at all is very vague.

I know the show is plenty nuts but serge turning into the kid seems a little too o_O to me. But the 'plausible' explanation, that she had a hallucinatory panic attack, isn't entirely satisfying either.

i guess it could be something else that is neither of those two.

oh yeah *takes off binary specs*

So, up to date with it now.

Is the man who went to barman's house and there was the dog bit, but he isn't the barman - is he definitely the man who stabs lucy and julie in the underpass? Wasn't quite sure.

I wondered if the stabber was some sort of being who stops people from being resurrected? Is he killing them in a magical way to stop this, cf burying a vampire upside down or at a cross-roads?

I also wondered if the little boy was something to do with this. I don't know, and I like not knowing atm.

I love the butterflies in ep 1 and the wolf in ep 2.

my favourite tv show in ages (and we have been spoilt in recent times ... ).

love the whole small rural town with dark social undertones slowly coming to the surface.

which is very twin peaks - i.e. aside from the weird stuff, there is the day to day small town politics ..

Is the man who went to barman's house and there was the dog bit, but he isn't the barman - is he definitely the man who stabs lucy and julie in the underpass? Wasn't quite sure.

serge, the barman's brother, definitely the attacker.

ok there was no funny reflection at the end of ep 3. but another question: who was the woman in mr costa's flat in ep 1? he tied her to the bed and then lit the place up but the fire brigade found no body, and then in ep 2 she was in the diner where simon beat up the waiter.

i mean yeah she was prob his wife but where is she now?

Thought it was her you saw looking furtive at her husband's funeral?

She turns up at his funeral looking confused

I'd like it if not much of Costa's story was revealed, just that little vignette

I've kept meaning to watch this, but as that would entail using 4OD I haven't been able to summon up the enthusiasm. But as most of the series I've been watching have finished (Orphan Black, Mad Men, Hannibal), I'll make the effort and start digging into this. Just love this kind of stuff when it's done well.

This is a good show. I'm slightly nervous about where they will take the story now they've built up the atmosphere so successfully - are they going to try to explain everything? The stuff about Lena's scar seems important too, though I'm not sure what it means.

4OD is pretty terrible - enforced adverts and it likes to stop working about 3/4 of the way through. Mind you it gives me fodder for 'worst tv adverts of the moment'.

Everyone is assuming that this show is going to a really conventional and boring place based on what they've seen in other shows but we don't actually know what Season 2 is going to be like at all.

I'm not assuming that.

Yeah I know, you just don't particularly like it, which is a different thing. What I'm getting at is the "this started off really well but I have misapprehensions about the direction suggested by the final episode" when we don't actually know if it's going to go in that direction.

Also people are really burned by Lost, every time a new show appears that layers loads of mysteries on top of one another, the assumption now is that the writers don't have a clue how to resolve them. Admittedly that's often vindicated but I have enough faith in this case.

Here it is: http://tvline.com/2014/04/29/ae-the-returned-adaptation/

Carlton Cuse, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

FFS why bother? Especially after all the other pointless remakes that are universally unloved.

definitely don't get the "bad acting" complaints, and i think it's way too soon to say for certain whether the writers don't know what they're doing - they haven't even tried to give us "answers" and have never even emphasised that as a priority

ahaha cuse is perfect

Just wanna say I really liked this show beginning to end. This is especially exciting to me because I don't think lex and I have ever liked the same thing before.

I really liked the early parts of this (establishing eerie premise), was bored by central parts of it (where is it going? + v humourless, sense of stasis), LOVED the final stages (ie didn't think it tailed off at all - vicious moral decisions, suggestion of portcullis coming down between different decisions made by different people).

hope the next series is a substantial progression from the final events of S1, rather than a replay of uncertainty.

watched the first episode of this and it was promising, but am really wary that the reason its gotten so much good press is that its 'classy' and 'subtle' (read: meandering), which arent bad things to be, but those seem to be part of their own set of boxset tv cliches now. my fear is that its going to be directionless and atmospheric at the expense of real drama or anything of much note happening. im all for subtlety, just not ponderously so.

obviously, i hope im really wrong.

The overall plot may not be up to scratch (imo, others will disagree) but the human drama and characterisation are compelling throughout (imo etc).

Take a shot every time someone says 'lake poob'.

About time. The teaser trailer for series 2.

https://youtu.be/NRABgDs-VD0

Wish I'd re-watched season one before the new episode

has it begun again?

It aired last night I presume, it has been on the torrentz for 15 hours.

Was first aired on Friday, repeated last night. It's on e4 or more4 or one of those rather than a channel anyone watches.

Will be on whatever ch4 are calling their iPlayer this week.

Debating whether I remember enough from last season to take the plunge on S2

Not entirely sure I'm going to bother with S2 - I liked how the first started a great deal, but it had sort of mostly turned into nonsense by the end of the season.

agreed. the initial episodes were wonderful but i grew less enamoured the more it took shape and became less about the impact of these people coming back from the dead and more scary zombie show

Judging by the first episode of S2, it's going to continue to be about character I think. Having said that I found the opener a bit ponderous, too many threads quite widely scattered.

Where were Camille and Lucy and the others meant to be, by the way? In another town?

watched the first three eps of the new series tonight, i thought it was great. relentlessly bleak. tho it has a few problems as per matt's question - i also wondered where the characters are, and like basic things like the military not believing the story about the returned - i feel like they're kind of writing around huge holes in the plot that they don't want to reveal yet or haven't got an answer for, but they are doing so quite deftly, for now.

watched the s2 premiere and found it insanely boring tbh

Yeah the premier was a drag but it's got going very nicely by episode three - a couple of real WTF moments in that most recent one. Problem is that unless they establish that some people can actually just die and never come back, there's not much of a sense of jeopardy right now.

They have made the classic mistake of spreading the cast out too thinly, a couple of characters seemed to have just vanished from the screen as well, although I'd forgotten that the police had mysteriously disappeared in the season finale. The stuff about Vincent's murder is pretty compelling - I like the idea of using the undead as an opportunity to shine light on dark incidents in a town's history.

Is there a Vincent? I'm not correcting you, I just can't remember who that is. I agree that all the backstory stuff is great. Though I have occasionally thought that quite a lot of people have died in this town, especially young people. Wouldn't most revenants just be octogenarians pottering around?

I'd completely forgotten who that Madame whatever was - not much point to her - and like you I had to read Wikipedia to get an idea of what happened at the very end of season 1.

The whole thing looks incredible, there aren't many shows I've seen with such beautiful shots.

I guess the big question now is why some of them are those ashen-faced zombies and some seem to know they are revenants and are sad about this.

Sorry I meant Victor, not Vincent.

ah cool - i genuinely wasn't sure if there was a character called vincent or not!

It was implied in the last episode that the revenants are mostly people who died before their time for whatever reason. With a bus crash, a flood and a family of serial killers in the town that's going to rack up to quite a lot.

Given that no one can leave the town and most of the people who could flee already have, I'm not sure how they're supposed to be living. Like how do any of them have jobs, or buy food, or whatever, at this stage?

that's exactly what i was thinking. it isn't quite in lost territory yet but it wouldn't be a long trip for it to get there.

Just watched ep 2, with the ruined dam. Is that the same dam that is also entirely intact and has people driving back and forth over, or is there another dam I am unaware of?

guess they rebuilt it?

what? when? this wasn't a flashback. berg, the new investigator in the town with mysterious flooding but a definitely intact damn, drives down an abandoned road and finds a ruined dam.

dam, damn

was it destroyed in the past? i don't remember that.

There was a dam that broke in the 60s or 70s (when Victor was alive) but they built a new one

ah right. one mystery solved!

Yeah unfortunately that mystery isn't meant to be solved until episode 3 so mini spoiler there.

ep 1 : bored me and i was debating whether to go for the rest.

end of ep 3 : hooked.

really enjoying it, just wish ch4 had the whole season on demand so i could just watch it all over a weekend.

just caught up.

oddly i heard 3 versions of 'what are they doing in heaven today' yesterday, two on the show and another on last week's world on 3 (bela fleck and abigail washburn)

Caught up, much sinister. Started laughing when tony and serge's cabin was invaded by a bevvy of beauties, stopped laughing pretty quickly. I'm enjoying all the factionalism and intense relationships (serge and milan, christ) without worrying too much about where it's all going.

did anyone keep up with this? finale was kinda crappy i thought but s2 generally was v good.

i have just watched the last two episodes and made a mental note not to watch series 3 if such a thing ever happens.

watching series 2 in the US, hasn't finished yet. Read online somewhere that they knew there wasn't going to be a series 3 so they had to wrap things up with series 2 finale, which resulted in a bad ending? Not there yet for us in any case.

yeah you'll see it when you see it but imo it did feel a bit rushed.

shame as i think at times this show has been brilliant, the relentless gloom it all, the beautiful, desolate cinematography, and the subtlety of some of the themes.

yeah, i watched this to the end.
as you say, it looked gorgeous.
however, early on in s2 i came to realise that a lot of it was people walking.
lots and lots of walking, and then a reveal.
not sure how i feel re the ending, but i wont say anything until the US crew have caught up.

yeah people walking and nothing happening, people sighing, it was just relentlessly grey. i quite liked that about it.

the personal relationships in it were also prob better and more organic than most shows

agreed re the focus being about relationships as opposed to action.
it was definitely something to watch in the autum/winter months.
it totally suited the recent grey/dark weather.
i really enjoyed it.

if there is a s3, then apparently, it will be a different setting/scenario.

http://www.digitalspy.com/tv/the-returned/news/a673549/there-could-be-a-third-series-of-the-returned-says-creator-fabrice-gobert/

This was definitely best when the mystery served to drive the relationships, unfortunately in the finale they decided to foreground the mystery and turn all the returned into warm milk zombies, even big psycho Milan. Still, I'm a sucker for a (kinda) happy ending.