The Returned (French supernatural drama on Channel 4)

I didn't like the turn it took in the last episode at all, but I don't see how they can go back to the small domestic stories that were the best thing about season 1.

Can we get spoilery on this thread? Tbh I thought they could have milked the domestic drama a good deal more and maybe throw in some more flashback stuff

Spoiler seal was broken a long time ago.

Yeah I think there should be a separate thread if American viewers don't want to know what happened.

This show is so good it deserves a thread.

Oops, did that accidentally, clearly there was a thread and I found it.

I love this show, although I haven't watched the last episode yet so maybe they ruined everything.

last episode takes the show in a new direction - IMHO
Curious as to when season 2 will appear

first episode was by far the best, as with a lot of these three-part gritty dramas.

(wasn't it 8 or 10 episodes?)

god, you're not wrong - it was 8 episodes. i distinctly remember it being shorter than that, but i was also watchign southcliffe at the same time.

yeah these kind of shows can never really live up to their initial pormises - the first couple of episodes struck this very elegiac note of haunted loss but then the show turned into something slightly different

it's inevitable, but i was impressed that they stretched out the initial phase (when nobody had quite realized what was going on) for as many episodes as they did. the first four or five are just perfect.

i thought this was the most consistent show of its type since twin peaks tbh

^agreed. just watched the last episode last night, loved the final shot. so i guess the setup for the season 2 is 'the horde' all living in the old previously-drowned village, with the living stuck on the hill?

crucial previously unasked question: was the zombie-ish zombie in the bathroom drinking water from the toilet? or...?

some interesting theories upthread, i wondered about the twins switching places when they were initially revealed but then forgot about it, and assumed the remark camille made in the last episode about 'even though you know i'm not her' referred to her being a different, undead version of herself. i don't know what the switch would even affect if it were true, except for another reason to for camille to be jealous of her sister's life (which seems to have faded anyway).

for some reason all the unanswered questions & mysteries don't bother me in this show, since they seem to be done for emotional/visceral effect rather than to keep you hooked on the plot.

This may have been posted upthread, but here's the US version, er...it's not a remake exactly, but the premise is the same. The French series is based on a film, and the US series is based on a book and not the French series or film. Anyway, an excuse to watch Kurtwood Smith is fine with me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MFrquHzlWA

this on netflix instant now

so so so good. so many questions tho, wish i'd been taking notes, might be one of the only shows i'll end up rewatching almost immediately.

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i thought it was weird that victor kept referencing his dead parents, but there's no mention of his dad in the flashbacks (the mother refers to "her" room/bed, not "ours") and victor never talks about seeing his brother again, even though he must have also been shot. also not clear at all why pierre and the other guy were in that house murdering everyone.

why are simon and camille and victor and that toilet-drinking guy all rotting but apparently not serge or mrs costa or lucy?

starting this and hoping it's better than TOTL. had high hopes for this sundance stuff!

currently being driven crazy about this guy cause he looks like 99% the same as some non-french actor i can't remember

http://fr.web.img2.acsta.net/r_640_600/b_1_d6d6d6/medias/nmedia/18/92/60/65/20371186.jpg

i might just be thinking of david costabile but i swear there's a closer match

robert wuhl?

john malkovich?

He looks like a warped version of Tom Hanks.

nearly 3 in and i'm disappointed, this is like half a good show and half a CW drama that isn't interesting

i watched the movie shortly after it came out on DVD, i don't remember much from it except that it was (also) disappointing and possibly a bit bigoted in its precious immigration allegory (if that's what it was going for -- could never really know). apparently this is the second time in a row i've hyped myself up for a well-tempered-and-possibly-a-little-eerie story abt dead people coming back and attempting to reintegrate only to be met with this hodge-podge of mystery shit and CREEPY CHILDREN ugh. i blame nearly everything i've ever read about either the movie or show which described it as the former

but seriously even with mogwai there are so many shots that feel like they came out of secret life of the american teenager

The high point of the season is in the middle imo, so it will get better for you before it gets worse.

tbh if you don't like it after three episodes, I don't see how the rest of it would change your mind

yeah that's what i'm thinking too but i'll probably watch the rest anyway

the parts that i think are really good are mostly just the three actual cases of returned people. esp the twins. this is why i think this idea keeps getting rehashed (a novel! a tv adaptation of the novel! an english adaptation of the tv adaptation of the novel!) even though the original film wasn't a big deal and wasn't any good -- the simple idea of dead people coming back and trying to reintegrate into their families and into society offers a ton of possibilities for stories and character dynamics that haven't really been explored. it's almost easy to make this shit interesting. but every time they do it they just have to add all this silly pointless shit that doesn't belong and suddenly i'm having LOST flashbacks

the simple idea of dead people coming back and trying to reintegrate into their families and into society offers a ton of possibilities for stories and character dynamics that haven't really been explored.

agreed. and i hate how the show boils down into classy horror tropes, or even exposes (?) how the returned returned to life. i was more interested in the domestic complexities of, what happens when your dead sister comes back to life?

kid's pee coming out of closet
now it's blood

^ this incredible shot really deserved its 90-second slow pan

just finished this, totally in love with it. almost every episode was so pitch-perfect. loved the pacing, the feeling of gradual convergence as all these storylines came together, loved how the finale answered some questions but raised even more.

might argue for camille as creepier than victor. victor played into a lot of classic creepy-child tropes but he's more vulnerable than malevolent, and even if he has this power to make people...see things that might result in them killing themselves, i don't think he quite has a handle on it - see his conversation with mme costa, his "i didn't mean to do it" re: chloé. i don't think camille is malevolent either but she's like the midpoint between simon (very human in his emotional demeanour, single-mindedness, need to pick up where he left off) and victor (preternaturally "creepy") in that she acts completely normally, exactly like you'd expect a teenage girl to, at times, but at others just seems that little bit too poised. the camille/léna plot was certainly the best of that season, and i loved how it didn't end in confrontation but reconciliation and a partnership you feel is now much stronger.

anyone feel like undead simon's intensity and refusal to take no for an answer might reflect something dysfunctional in that relationship when he was alive? adèle seems to have a need for codependency that's evident in her relationship with thomas as well.

thomas is a cunt and i hope he gets a nasty comeuppance soon. controlling, selfish, stupid. the way he sold everyone but his own precious family out in the last episode, ugh. funny that he seems to be analogous to rick in the walking dead. all cops are bastards.

mme costa's over-it snark is much appreciated and i hope to see more of it in the next series. she seems to know what's up but is generally uninterested in telling people.

think it was abundantly clear from the minute julie hopefully raised the possibility that she was dead that she totally isn't. lucy otoh...dead already when she first arrived? or really just a sexual clairvoyant?

anyone feel like undead simon's intensity and refusal to take no for an answer might reflect something dysfunctional in that relationship when he was alive?

this is certainly what i was thinking

currently being driven crazy about this guy cause he looks like 99% the same as some non-french actor i can't remember

Not sure if this is what you were thinking, but my first instinct was "Wait, Fred Armisen's in this?"

http://funnyandspicy.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/The-Front-Desk-With-Fred-Armisen-Vow-of-Silence-300x255.jpg

I enjoyed the series pretty much all the way through, though I agree with the consensus disappointment at the way it broadened into something more genre predictable in the last few episodes. Like a lot of these weird-tale series, it keeps piling on elements that don't necessarily seem connected or well-thought-out -- the twins' telepathic bond, the creeping skin disease, the way Julie, Laure and Victor/Louis are unable to actually drive out of town ... starts to feel like whatever supernatural trope serves the needs of the immediate plot point. Still, great atmospherics, interesting approach to the whole idea of the undead.

On the lighting, I thought this was interesting, from the Guardian (apologies if it's mentioned upthread):

Based on a 2004 film of the same name, Les Revenants was given its distinctive feel partly by the director's decision only to film between 4pm and 9pm – "Fabrice always wanted it to be dusk", said Thiam

My wife and I finished watching this yesterday. I really wanted to like it, and the first couple of episodes were moderately intriguing, but the payoff was a flabby script, bad acting, editing a two-hour movie into an eight-hour endurance test, and finally a bunch of questions that were rendered too boring to bother answering. The Alps were pretty, though.

yeah i thought this started off so well but we never even watched the 10th episode, it had become pretty clear they didn't know what they were doing

It tails off very badly, and never really fulfills the promise of those first episodes. But those first episodes are excellent.

It is far from flawless but I still enjoyed the full series myself. It is still remarkably better than a hell of a lot of series from last year so I forgive it's faults.

OH I'M SO GLAD THIS THREAD POPPED BACK UP. I put some cranky comments on the Netflix one but this is much better.

Are you talking about the terrible ABC series Resurrection? I think that is from a different source but it is fucking appalling.

I don't think Resurrection is so terrible. It's just a different thing altogether.

I couldn't take that ridiculous concept that the returned kid shows up in some Chinese province. They just buried him too deep durr! Some really rubbish sub X-Files type shit.

The most recent episode revealed all the "resurrected" are showing up at some particular degree of longitude/latitude from Arcadia, though...very Lost-y, but not random.

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).