The Returned (French supernatural drama on Channel 4)

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'.

adblock works though?

I think they're explicitly pairing up each of the returnees with some painful consequences (Mrs. Costa returns -> Mr. Costa kills himself, Simon returns -> Adele looks likely to break down again, especially if Thomas leaves her, Serge returns -> goes back to attacking/killing people, maybe Victor and Julie's neighbour, maybe Camille and Lena's scar?). It's obviously a theme of the series (in a "be careful what you wish for" vein) but I hope it's not part of the plot, with some causal being at the bottom of the lake motivated by revenge or general malevolence.

So, I watched all three episodes back to back today, and, yeah, I liked it. Didn't love it, though. The dialogue (translation?) isn't the best, but it's nicely stylish and sombre, and has a few decent chills. Strongly reminiscent of Let the Right One In in tone and mood and muted performances, as well as environment: cramped flats, dimly lit underpasses, grey concrete; and the surrounding countryside lurks ominously.
It's not as feverishly off-kilter as Twin Peaks, but I do like how mysterious and seemingly inexplicable things can happen at any time.

The more I watch, the more I'm reminded of Donnie Darko.

For one thing, it's an antidote to a lot of recent terrible films and TV, which totally waste the opportunities afforded by the supernatural.

The by now conventional plague of lol zombies totally misses the horrible idea at the heart of the vodoun zombie myth, that someone you know turns into a shell.

This isn't zombies, but it brings something of that personal horror back imo

In the Flesh, recently, pushed that idea a bit more.

Well well well

'He won't talk'

Still nothing new about her that got stabbed in the underpass, except she's some sort of clairvoyant.

The depth of the lake seems to be very important, but it's not clear why. What's down there?

Do we know the name of the village, btw?

Do we know how many episodes this thing is?

Do we know why even though the french accent is supposed to be sexy it's always funny when they say they're going to "the lake poob"?

so helping hand dude was one of the balaclava guys who shot victor? but seemingly the one who tried not to have him killed?

and what's the story with lena seemingly mirroring the murdered girl?

it's all quite cool and confusing but i fear that they may be doing that lost thing of setting up incredible mysteries in the opening series which will ultimately be impossible to explore in a satisfactory way.

this is based on a film, right? maybe someone who cares less could investigate and report back with whether or not it'll be worth investing any more time in this. no spoilers.

is it going to have a few seasons? like how far has it gone in france?

wiki says 8 episodes this season & season 2 scheduled for next year

Do we know the name of the village, btw?

Was wondering if it's significant that nobody ever mentions the name of the town

Also a wee bit disappointed that the adverts werent' subtitled last night

So I watched the whole series on DVD when it came out in France a few months ago - best French series ever by far (not saying much I know). I don't wanna spoil it for everyone here so I'll refrain from commenting too much - but yeah a second season is definitely on the way.

The depth of the lake seems to be very important, but it's not clear why. What's down there?

Maybe I misinterpreted this, but I thought the idea was that the water was actually rising and nobody knows why - they checked the dam for cracks/leaks but everything's fine. Did I get that totally wrong?

i think its that the lake's going down & the water level in the power station's going up?

The level was falling, but then in last night's ep one chap said they "don't know where it's coming from" and another guy said it's ok lol "the power station won't get flooded", cut to shot of an apparently waterlogged power station. Very confusing. I suppose this would make sense if the falling level has corresponded with water level rises downstream from the dam, but this is far from clear, and you'd think someone else would have noticed.

xp

it's indeed the latter - water rising on one side, drying up on the other

I've heard something about having to wait two weeks for next episode?

Also - apparently lucy's clairvoyance happened during sex?

When Jerome & Lucy were together at the start of the first ep one of them said "it can't work every time", maybe that's what they were talking about.

Aha!

Then again, there's loads of things that can't work every time..

Aye, maybe he'd asked her to iron the trousers we saw him putting back on. Although if my iron didn't work every time I'd definitely buy a new one.

I'm sure I saw animals or something moving when they did the shot over the power station. Also the opening credits appear to show some kinds of beasts submerged in water.

Helping Hand dude was always going to be dodgy. Never trust a faithful best friend/confidant with no discernable plot function. Get the feeling the other balaclava dude might have been Serge.

I think I mean Jerome there.

the opening credits contain a lot of stuff actually

So the explanation for Julie's stabbing hallucination in the previous ep may be that Victor was projecting visions onto Mrs. Payet and Julie received them too? It hardly happened to everyone in the building (or you'd have more than one suicide) but maybe Julie is susceptible due to her bond with Victor or her past trauma.

Interesting how all the returned are ending up in the shelter. Are we going to have a Pierre episode soon?

so helping hand dude was one of the balaclava guys who shot victor?

Yeah that's right - me and my wife reckon the two balaclava guys are definitely Pierre as a teenager and a younger Mr Costa (we paused cos we're sly and he's got the same eyes).

Just rewatched episode 1 again and it has some crazy level of detail going on that we totally missed the first time round eg:
- one of the photos that Mr Costa burns is a class picture of a slightly younger him stood next to two red-haired twins
- the butterfly that escapes from the glass case has a label underneath it giving the scientific name of the species. The species is Victorina stelenes

Interesting re Mr. Costa - with the 35-year gap and him looking a lot older than Pierre in the burglary scene, he's pretty much the only character we've seen who's old enough.

He's also the only character whose response to the return of a dead loved one has been to tie them to a bed, set the house on fire and jump off a dam.

What we can't figure out is who has summoned up the return of Simon through thee olde sex magick with Lucy. The rest of the returned departed fit in with people that could have been willed back by men using her services (Camille/Jerome, Victor/Pierre, Serge/Toni, Mrs Costa/Mr Costa).

And Lucy herself - was she someone that was back from the dead?

We don't rrust Thomas at all btw, we know he's no good cos the guy playing him was a rotter in the last series of Spiral too.

People seemed to know Lucy in the first episode, so I assumed she was not a returnee. Would be a bit surprised if they all came back to town on the sex magick express (but who knows?), feel like there's a darker revenge/punishment idea going on though I'm not sure how it fits together (who's punishing who?).

Actually I've been thinking Thomas might turn out to be an ok (but controlling) guy - though that's mostly because what we've seen so far hasn't been that flattering.

Also: do we think that Jerome actually caused Lena's injury, or are they covering something up?

We were looking at Lucy's character profile to remind us who was who and it says "This angel-faced young girl got off a bus one year ago and found herself a job as a waitress at The Lake Pub". Can't remember whether this has been revealed yet or not, sorry if I've just unwittingly let the dead cat out of the bag.

I'm fancifully hoping that Lena is actually sprouting a pair of butterfly wings.

Think we were told at one point that Lucy had about a dozen men who visited her, so it's likely to not just be Jerome who has summoned up the return of someone in this way (if that's how the whole mechanism works).

Huh, hadn't thought about that angle at all. Could be, could be...

Does nosy lady with cats commit suicide or does victor go and kill her? Doctor woman goes out and reminds him to lock the door, he could slip out that way.

If it was him who caused the bus crash then he can't have been returned by lucy sex magic because the bush crash was before lucy came to town?

Lena going into the tunnel. No, don't go in the tunnel. But she sort of had to. But will he kill her or do the scars somehow mean he doesn't have to?

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.