The Returned – that show you were persuading everyone to ‘never mind the subtitles and give a go’ back in the summer of 2013 – has finally clambered out for its long-awaited second season.
Full marks if you can remember what happened in the first season’s finale. Even after being eyes-deep in the first run, with its full-frontal nudity, cannibalism, and brotherly shovel fights, I had to read up on what exactly went on in ‘The Horde’.
That’s because, in the show’s snow-globe universe it’s only been six months since the Alpine town flooded and the undead sloshed off into the night. It’s been two years for us – long enough that you shouldn’t feel guilty for being unable to remember all the names of who did what, or even what they did. And we’ve been lucky. In France they had to wait three years!
But, like returning to a place you once holidayed in, it’s amazing how quickly it all comes back to you. Look, there’s the Helping Hand community centre, and there’s the diner where the music is just kitsch and intrusive enough to distract you from the subtitles, and – regardez avec affection! – there’s Le ‘Lake Pub’.
All of them are still coated in that familiar veneer of perpetual twilight, but now also drenched in the cold, charcoal hues of the post-apocalyptic. Après-flood everything looks like a Europe run by Nigel Farage. The town’s practically abandoned: left to the military, a few hardy souls, and a delicious-looking stag that likes to hang around the Mediatheque (maybe hoping to borrow the first season on DVD).
Across the familiar concrete parabola of the dam runs an ambulance. Inside there’s a woman you half-recognise, like someone from a dream or a friend’s wedding in Swindon. Once the oxygen mask is removed you realise it’s Adele – oh, Adele! – large with her and Simon’s zom-baby. And yet ‘pregnant’ doesn’t seem quite the right word. ‘Host’ seems more fitting, and the connotations just as chilling, because what happens next is a reminder of how unsettling The Returned is.
The reason for her being in the ambulance in the first place is arguably even more disturbing, especially as it creeps from a human, rather than supernatural place. Not surprising really, it’s always been the human actions that have been the most impactful in the show: people trying (and failing) to cope with all the unanswered questions of loss, life, death, often all at once. People worrying in very domestic ways, behind closed doors and cigarettes, pacing in A&E rooms, just like you or I would. That’s in no way a criticism, quite the opposite. It’s the often bewildering laissez-faire humanity in the face of overwhelming oddity that is the core strength of the show.
A handsome stranger/handsome architect called Berg (Laurent Lucas) rolls into town to investigate the dam and why parts of the town are still mysteriously underwater. From that water the undead – new and familiar – are bobbing up. Which means questions of ‘why?’ are also bobbing up with them. Will Season 2 be as withholding with the answers as its predecessor?
Maybe not. We do find out where all the Returned have gone, although that in itself also raises questions aplenty. The reveal makes for a rushed final ten minutes, and also more questions, but it also provides some glimmer of hope that the show has come back with a direction that may yield answers in a way the movie on which the show is based – Les Revenants – never did.
Immediately submerging us into Fabrice Gobert’s world, ‘L’enfant’ isn’t an inviting episode, and if you’ve never seen The Returned before this is not a jumping on point. That was in Episode 1, back in 2013. In fact it might even be prudent to have a rewatch before The Returned‘s return.
Else you’ll spend far too much time placing faces and retracing actions instead of enjoying a season opener which just gets on with the business of being damn mysterious. And being damn good at it too.
Airs at 9pm on Friday 16 October 2015 on More4.
> Buy Season 1 on DVD on Amazon.
Are you looking forward to Season 2? Let us know below…