The Returned (French supernatural drama on Channel 4)

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.