Well, George A. Romero must be smiling – even if the rest of us are bored to tears. Yes, just when you thought it was safe to turn on the TV, along comes Syfy with Z Nation – yet another musing on life after the much-hypothesized zombie apocalypse. With its debut set for September 2014, we now have the first teaser trailer.
Starring Harold Perrineau (Zero Dark Thirty), Tom Everett Scott (Southland) and DJ Qualls (Supernatural), this “new” drama series is set 3 years after an “extinction-scale event” (or, zombie apocalypse) has decimated the population of the US (and, presumably, the world). It seems that a rag-tag band of citizens have stumbled across the only human to have been bitten by a person of undead status and survived, so they must deliver him to the last functioning laboratory in the country, and thus, save the world.
Putting aside, for a moment, the fact that zombie-based stories have literally been done to death, there actually is something appealing about this teaser trailer. The show comes from the producer of Sharknado – which really tells you everything you need to know. It appears to be cut from the same ‘embrace the ridiculousness with enthusiasm’ cloth – not least suggested by the quality of the final ‘scare’ of this preview.
This show is clearly not interested in wasting any time – we’re straight into the action, with Harold Perrineau summing up the entire point of the endeavour in the minimum number of words possible. In the final analysis, it may well be Perrineau that elevates this thing, based on his performance in the trailer. It’s great casting on the part of the producers – he does, after all, have a background in zombie-apocalypse acting, having been in 28 Weeks Later.
So, take a deep breath, steel yourself, and give this teaser trailer for Z Nation a spin. Suspend all urges to question when writers and producers will stop trying to reanimate the corpse of a long-dead premise, and take heart in the fact that – by the time the real zombie apocalypse happens – we’ll have seen so many instructional TV shows and films, that we’ll all be absolutely fine.
