TV Review: iZombie Pilot

iZombie Pilot Episode created by Diane Ruggiero and Rob Thomas

I read the first twenty or so of the iZombie comics back in 2010. They have an interesting premise: a girl named Gwen dies and comes back to life as a zombie. She stays normal as long as she has brains to eat, otherwise she begins to go feral. Happily, Gwen works as a grave digger at a "green" cemetery where they don't embalm the bodies before burial, so she has access to plenty of fresh, untainted brains. Whenever she eats brains, she has visions of that person's life. Since she is a bit of a do-gooder, she helps out the next of kin with whatever problems the dead person remembers (everything from cats in trees to murder most foul). Gwen has a crew of supernatural friends--the ghost of a girl from the 1950s who hangs out at the cemetery and a guy who is a were-terrier--who form a sort of Scooby Gang to help her. Vampires figure large in the early stories as well as a mummy. The mythology of the comic is fairly well thought out and the comic is clearly popular enough that was transformed into a television series.

The TV show has a girl named Olivia ("Liv" for short, haha) Moore who is a star medical student with a hunky boyfriend and not much else in her life. She reluctantly goes to a party on a boat where an drug-induced zombie plague breaks out. She is turned but still has control of herself as long as she eats brains. She dumps the boyfriend and the medical career for an assistant job at the Coroner's Office, where she has access to plenty of fresh, untainted brains. She gets the visions like in the comic books which help the police investigate crimes (the morgue is full of murder victims, after all). Her supervisor in the morgue finds out about her condition and is amazingly supportive (both keeping her secret and working on a cure for her condition). There's no sign of any other supernatural beings so far.

I'll admit a laughed a few times during the show and the plot was enjoyable enough, though not as quirky and fun as the comics. None of the twists in the story were surprises and I felt that she had too much voice-over commentary. Maybe with the setup done that will be toned down in future episodes. The cast is charming enough. I'll watch a few more episodes to see how it goes.