Thanks for understanding, everyone. Sorry if I might have sounded harsh, but I felt it's high time we're honest with each other. Insincerity has never been my specialty.
Anyway, let's get back to the business of reviewing!
Season 1 They say that the zombie genre is dead, that nothing fresh could be done with those rotting corpses. I remember various discussions about how the classic Romero zombies of yesterdays are no longer scary today, yet "The Returned" has recaptured that primal fear about the alien concept of death that made the walking dead so terrifying in the first place, a concept that modern writers for the 'athletic zombie' crowd couldn't seem to grasp.
Creator Fabrice Gobert paints death itself in both fascinating and disturbing ways. It seems so simple to embrace a wondrous miracle like this, having your loved ones returning to you. Yet our society has grown more complicated; Lazarus returning to life isn't a simple matter of faith anymore. Most of the characters graciously accepted the gift of resurrection at first, trying to move on with their life as per usual. But soon enough, the secrets and guilt we bury with the dead come surfacing. It gradually becomes apparent that with all the sorrows that come with the passing of loved ones, life would be more peaceful had the dead rested in eternity. There's another kind of nightmare that comes from the dead returning, and this wonderful bloodless series explores that often unaddressed subconscious fear in its entirety.
What really holds this series together isn't exactly the provocative theme, but the excellent characters that reinforce that theme. You have a wide variety of different lives here that allows a thorough experimentation with the concept of death. Camille and Léna are twin sisters separated by time. Adèle is a young mother whose beloved died right before their marriage, and is now fiercely protected in her new relationship with a cop. There's even a serial killer intertwined amidst this twisted web, further complicating the matters of death.
Both seasons last eight episodes. The season one finale ended on a rather strange note. I'm not quite sure what to make of that final scene... or what it represents in the grand scheme of things. There's definitely a lot more powerful symbolism in the last episode that compares the living and the dead - and being on the 'living' side isn't really all it's cut out to be.
Also, one does not simply skip the opening theme of this series. Mogwai's "Hungry Face" gets creepier with each viewing.
5/5 (A rare gem of a TV series that doesn't dispense your predictable Walking Dead despair)