How To Tell Your Returneds Apart.
In the last few days I’ve sort of stumbled upon a recently added Netflix TV series. The show is called “The Returned”. It’s a French show based on a 2004 movie, and I’m finding it absolutely absorbing, almost in the way that True Detective and Twin Peaks once got their respective hooks in to me.
The premise of the show is simple: a small mountain town in Alpine France suddenly has selected dead folks coming back, exactly as they were before they died. They appear healthy, in mostly sound mind…and fairly confused and blanked out on where they’ve been and what happened to them that they died in the first place. If you’re expecting that to be warm and fuzzy, don’t. Living people react to folks who’ve been dead for a decade or more just showing up at the house in unpredictable ways.
Also, apparently one of the returned dead is a serial killer.
And then there’s Victor. Yeesh.
It’s a haunting and beautiful show that I cannot recommend enough. That being said, if you’re not careful, you’re going to get caught in this weird net of Returned-isms, because apparently every intellectual property publisher and their Uncle Bob wants a version of this premise. Let us fine folk at Popnarcotic help you navigate this nonsense.
1. We begin with Les Revenants, a 2004 French film.
Les Revenants was directed by Robin Campillo. It received middling reviews. Many critics thought the premise was interesting, but not particularly well-executed. The movie was retitled “They Came Back” for English-speaking audiences.
2. The Returned (the French TV series THAT IS SERIOUSLY GREAT AND TOTALLY WORTH WATCHING!) is an adaptation of that 2004 movie.
The show is called “Les Revenants” in France, but on Channel 4 in the UK and on the Sundance Channel and Netflix in the US it is called “The Returned”. The first 8-episode season aired in 2012. The second season airs later this year. The series is created by (or adapted, or however is the proper way to put it) by a fellow with outstanding taste in music named Fabrice Gobert. In one of Fabrice’s previous movies, he got Sonic Youth to do the score (apparently just by asking); Mogwai does the score for The Returned, and it is outstandingly beautiful and haunting.
3. In 2013 a very bright young filmmaker named Manuel Carballo made a movie called–wait for it–The Returned.
Carballo’s movie is also excellent, and although it’s a zombie movie, as Tom Chick points out in his interview and podcast with Carballo, it’s so much more. This Returned is actually about healthcare issues, rationing, and medical ethics. Other than the title, it has no relationship to the French TV series or movie.
4. August of 2013 saw the release of a book called–come on, you’ve already guessed–“The Returned”.
The book is by a guy named Jason Mott, who as far as I know never saved any games in the 2011 World Series. In Mott’s book, he apparently presents a scenario where he explores how a family copes with having a long-dead child suddenly return to them, alive and exactly the way he was when he died. Stop me if this all sounds familiar to you. I guess in this novel, the rising from the dead thing is also a bit of a global phenomenon. Or something. Frankly, I’m stunned that Jason Mott wasn’t sued to the ends of the earth for what sounds like a blatant bit of plagiarism.
5. ABC here in America optioned Mott’s book for a TV series called Resurrection.
“Hey, but wait,” I can hear you thinking. “This show will be based on the novel, so it won’t be like the awesome French TV series that is suddenly getting ripped off by everyone who brushes up against it. Indeed, in this interview the executive producers of “Resurrection” claim that not only have they totally never EVER seen the French show, but they’ve deliberately avoided watching it for fear of ripping it off. The producers of the ABC show say that, in fact, to try to be totally original, they’re only using Mott’s book as a jumping off point, but that their TV show will go in its own unique direction. In fact, their original vision of Mott’s novel involves them setting Resurrection in a mountain village in Colorado, and making the initial season of the series only 8 episodes. If I am a lawyer for Canal+, I’m on the phone with everyone at ABC at this point, because they’re completely lying here. The show is an obvious ripoff of the French show, and it’s so boldly crass the way they’re doing it that I can’t help but root for this show to fall flat on its face. What, are they waiting until they see the next season of Les Revenants in November before deciding on a second season?
6. But wait, there’s more!
Just when you thought you could tell one Returned from another, it turns out that the A&E Channel has actually secured the rights to the French TV series (which you really should be watching right now instead of reading this). A&E has a show runner attached to the series and is apparently moving full steam ahead on bringing an Enlish-language American adaptation of the show to American cable TV. Oddly enough, A&E is majority-owned by Disney/ABC. Talk about hedging your bets.
At any rate, there’s one Returned I recommend, and that’s the French TV show. It is beautifully, cinematically shot. The dialogue is painful and real-sounding. The acting is superb. The production values are through the roof. It can be seen on Netflix (which is where I discovered it), the Sundance Channel on cable, or you can buy individual episodes from Amazon and iTunes. If my fanboying over how great the show is hasn’t yet convinced you, let me show you the title sequence, which spoils nothing about the show, but does tell you everything about how beautiful and weird and amazing it is:
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