“Gimme a ‘Z’! Gimme an ‘O’! Gimme an ‘M’! Gimme-” Oh you get the drift. Grab yourself a baseball bat and a Cornetto; it’s zombie cheerleader time!

Superheroes versus the undead isn’t anything new to comic book fans, but it’s a great concept, even in a market already overrun by zombie stories on the big and small screen. Here Misfits finds a way to tackle the genre in a refreshing way while still hitting all the usual beats that make zombies such fun. It helps that the arch-villain of the week is a zombie cat called Mr. Miggles.

At his urging, Seth’s ex-girlfriend Shannon (‘ex’, not only in relationship status, but also in the same sense as that parrot in the Monty Python sketch) is brought back from the dead by Curtis’ new power. But all too late does it become apparent that Curtis’ ability isn’t so much reanimating life as it is creating zombies. Throw in a resurrected Mr. Miggles and everything’s suddenly gone a bit Pet Sematary, but in the most entertaining way possible.

In an understated bit of allegory, Shannon’s zombie state is treated almost like a drug or alcohol addiction rather than an undead curse, which makes sense as she was a drug addict in her former life.

Rather than see her transform immediately into one of the craven undead we watch her painful struggle to fight off her urges, watching her lapse and then suffer an addict’s regret, supported and enabled by her boyfriend Seth throughout.

It all means a tense, slow-burn that’s rewarded with a delightfully unhinged final 15 minutes of baseball bats on brains as Mr. Miggles gets loose among the cheerleaders (a round of applause to whoever pitched the idea ‘zombie cat attacks cheerleaders’ in the writers room).

Though they’re clearly zombie fodder from the outset, we don’t care. By the time those pom-pom waving ladies scramble onto the screen we’ve dealt with the ramifications of being undead through Shannon’s story, and we’re ready for some violence and viscera. That’s exactly what we get, and thanks to some excellent make-up and sound-effects it’s rather satisfying.

In the midst of the carnage the appearance and swift dispatch of a new probation worker is a throwaway gag that is almost thrown away too quickly, but it’s likely that’s the point. Probation workers are the ‘redshirts’ of the Misfits universe.

Wisely the number of zombie movie references are kept to a minimum, with only Simon giving one overt reference to Dawn of the Dead (although let us know if you caught more!). Though the zombies are very 28 Days Later, and the tone is very Shaun of the Dead, it never feels weighed down with tired tropes and rotting clichés.

Throughout the episode there’s a strong performance from all of the main cast, and plenty of the sparky group dynamic that’s sometimes been missing from this series, especially in the scenes inside the old lady’s flat and at Seth’s front door.

Joseph Gilgun steals most of the best lines and many of the laughs dragging around his absurdist comedy sledgehammer but in truth everyone gets at least two laugh-out-loud lines this week.

All in all, a great penultimate episode.

One question though: shouldn’t there also be a zombie iguana wandering round the estate now? Maybe Iggy and Mr. Miggles could become friends…

Aired at 10pm on Sunday 11th December 2011 on E4.

> Buy the Series 1-2 boxset on Amazon.

> Order the Series 3 DVD on Amazon.

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