We might still be buzzing from his franchise movie foray, Meg 2: The Trench, but Ben Wheatley is back at the grindstone with his first TV project: Generation Z.
Ben Wheatley might just have one of the most interesting careers in the movie business at the moment. After widespread acclaim for his horror-inflected indie flicks Kill List, Sightseers and A Field In England, more recently he’s moved tentatively into bigger-budget waters, re-adapting Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca for Netflix and crashing helicopters into giant sea beasts in Meg 2: The Trench. Not to abandon his smaller, British-er roots, though, he even found time to make the superb In The Earth in 2021. He’s been a busy fellow.
Now, however, he’s taking the oft-travelled path into the world of TV, working with Channel 4 on a six-part coming-of-age series called Generation Z. The Z, presumably, stands for zombies. Clever, eh?
The show is currently in production in Wales, and Channel 4 have released a whole bunch of images from what they’ve shot so far. See, there’s zombies in it! We told you!
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- Credit: Channel 4
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- Credit: Channel 4
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- Credit: Channel 4
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- Credit: Channel 4
Here’s the show’s official synopsis:
“Set in the fictional town of Dambury, the kind of place with stark opportunities and not much to do. Grey, unassuming, forgotten. It’s the last place you’d expect the apocalypse to begin… But when an army convoy overturns outside a care home, a chemical leak starts to have an adverse effect on the residents there. The OAPs, led by Cecily and Frank, played by Sue Johnston ( The Royle Family) and Paul Benthall ( The World’s End), escape the grasp of the army looking to contain their angry, violent, insatiable hunger for raw flesh.”
“On the night of the outbreak, teenagers – Charlie, Kelly, Steff and Finn, played respectively by Jay Lycurgo (The Bastard Son & The Devil Himself), Buket Komur ( Our House), Lewis Gribben (Somewhere Boy), and Viola Prettejohn (The Nevers) – are living normal teenage lives: tinnies, messy feelings, complex relationships and ignoring their A-Level prep. But the gang abruptly find themselves at the centre of the virus when Kelly’s nan Janine, played by Anita Dobson ( EastEnders) becomes infected and attacks her.”
“Generation Z is about intergeneration justice and community breakdown that boldly satirizes a world where truth is stranger than fiction, exploring not just the political fault lines in our society but also the very real issues facing teenagers today.”
The six-part, one-hour-episode series is written and directed by Wheatley. No official release date has been suggested so far.
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