‘Black Summer’ Co-Creator Says No One Is Safe in the ‘Z-Nation’ Spinoff
Preview
Fans of Syfy’s 2014–18 series Z Nation have a new show to sink their teeth into with this zombie-apocalypse prequel that’s as flat-out frightening as it is timely.
“We were trying to tell an American refugee story, only using zombies,” explains Karl Schaefer, who cocreated the spinoff with Z Nation co–executive producer John Hyams.
“We wanted to see what it would be like to show Americans on the run like refugees and we wanted to drop you right in the middle of it. There’s no exposition, there’s no crawl at the beginning to tell you what’s [happening], and nobody seems to know what’s going on through most of it.”
Which only makes it more terrifying. Set in a Midwestern city almost a year before the events of Z Nation, Summer eschews the dark comedy of its predecessor and goes straight for the scares by opening in chaos. The military is frantically evacuating neighborhoods, the dead are rising, and young mom Rose (Jaime King) is desperate to find the daughter she’s been separated from amid the horror.
Over the course of eight episodes, she and a handful of other survivors — all of whom are introduced via individual chapters — will fight hordes of flesh-eating fiends on their way to the alleged safety of a sports stadium. But don’t count on everyone to make it. As a laughing Schaefer puts it, “The more you like [a character], oooh, the more danger they’re in!”
Black Summer, Streaming Now, Netflix
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G
Black Summer is superb, stripped down zombie drama. It's what the first 8 episodes of Fear the Walking Dead should have been, and finds a great way to tell its story across 5 hours of episodic television without feeling at all padded or bloated.
Most of the complaints I've read are absurd, on the order of demanding that the viewer's food be thoroughly chewed before reaching the plate. Worst are the complaints claiming there's little in the way of character shown or developed. Are viewers so innured to exposition other than one character plonkingly informing another who she is and what she wants that character development and revelation through action--and the action is constant--is just too hard to grasp?
!!! SPOILERS FOLLOW !!!
In one instance a character changes radically over the first season, but we see this through the action that first besets her, then that she precipitates. And unlike in The Walking Dead, she doesn't stop every eight minutes to spend five minutes telling another character why, and how, and with whom. In addition there are a surprising number of long takes which, given how much stunt work is involved, is impressive indeed, and which create a sense of urgency and engagement that's rare in serial tv,
Legitimate minor quibbles include guns with infinite ammo, people occasionally blasting away next to glass without breaking it, and the occasional failure to insure one's safety by simply closing a door behind. But given the terrific and offbeat storytelling, the well made and well executed set pieces, and the intensely physical acting from everyone involved (more so than any series I can recall), those are quibbles very much worth overlooking. Zombie fans, action fans, and film buffs should all find plenty here to chew on.
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C
Looks exciting! Too bad it's on Netflix!
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G
Seek it out regardless, Don. It's definitely worth the effort.
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