Whether you came away vexed or vindicated, in its final hour The Returned didn’t provide us with a revelation as much as a reminder: that this is a show which is drenched in its own mystery, but which has never been obsessed with it. In fact, it’s been downright nonchalant about it. Almost annoyingly so.
Annoying, but in retrospect hardly surprising. From Episode 1 The Returned treated the whole act of the dead coming back in the way you would a natural disaster – like an earthquake or tsunami or Ben Elton’s The Wright Way – and rather than trying to figure out what caused it, it focused on the effect of it. Of how individuals cope when their world is turned upside down.
It’s the more compelling approach, and though it would have been gratifying to have some questions answered, we haven’t tuned in every balmy Sunday night just to watch a Rubik’s cube be solved with subtitles. We’ve watched it to see a uniformly excellent cast act their ‘chausettes’ off in a 60 minute rectangle of cinematographic beauty. If you’re still feeling cheated, it’s not too late to catch up on The White Queen; just bear in mind you’ll spend half the time staring up Rebecca Ferguson’s nostrils.
But you really shouldn’t feel cheated. What The Returned‘s first series bow lacks in answers it counterweights for grandly with emotion and meaning. The first horror is a loved one you thought dead walking back into your life: the second, greater horror, is losing them again. And everyone loses as the horde of returned – nameless, silent, and kept in a dehumanizing perpetual silhouette – march back into town to reclaim their fellow zombie-kind. An unnatural disaster. The why is unknown, but the result is gut-wrenching. And not in a Romero sort of way.
Julie is forced to part from Laure so she can protect Victor; Claire leaves behind the rest of the Seguret clan to stay with Camille; Adele watches Simon turn against her and, in a twist on the living losing the dead, Serge watches his brother Toni die. It’s an agonising final ten minutes, as families and friendships are torn apart and the dead are reclaimed for who knows what sinister purpose. That we don’t know makes it all the more terrifying as well as aggravating. Maybe they’re just off on a group walking tour to Lourdes?
Only one person gains anything other than a sense of horror: Adele. An undead child stirs in her womb; another mystery ready to be born. But will it ever be fully explained to us, or will it be another drop in the reservoir of questions we have? Also a pressing question: where’s everyone going to live now the town is flooded. Ooh-oh, dibs on Pierre’s bunker!
The good news is that Channel 4 has the rights to the second series, due to be filmed in early 2014. Perhaps there’ll be some explanations mixed in with the acting. But that brings with it the biggest unanswered question of all: will you have the patience to return to The Returned?
Aired at 9pm on Sunday 28 July 2013 on Channel 4.
> Order The Returned on DVD on Amazon.
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