TV Review: Glitch Season Three (2019)

 Glitch Season 3 (2019) created by Tony Ayres and Louise Fox

Click the links for reviews of Season One and Season Two.

Out of curiosity, I came back to the Australian zombie series Glitch. The first season was okay and the second was disappointing. My memories have gotten a little vague so I was more than willing to give the show another try.

This season opens with one character hoping his girlfriend will rise from the dead. Meanwhile, in another part of the cemetery, two other people come out of their graves. Belle is the daughter of some religious fanatics. She died 15 years ago and her family thinks she's possessed by a demon, so not a happy homecoming. Chi is a Chinese opera performer from the 1800s who came to Yoorana as a laborer in search of gold. He and Belle help each other throughout the show.

Their story intertwines with that of the main cast. Some people leave Yoorana hoping never to come back. Noregard, the chemical company that is involved with the resurrections, has some new bad guys running the show since the original ones were offed in the last season (and early this season). So all the characters get pulled back to town. Phil, who thought his purpose was to kill all the risen, has a change of heart and decides to be a family man. At the same time, William (who turns out to have been a pirate in a previous life) and local cop James decide that they do need to kill all the risen. They have a much more humane reason--since the resurrections violate the rules of nature, nature itself is unraveling and the world will end. Their zombie existence will cause the apocalypse. Signs are already appearing, like power outages, freak storms, earthquakes, and massive bush fires. 

The new reason for the risen to be rekilled is a bit of a stretch of credibility. Why didn't disasters start happening two seasons ago? The movement to the resolution of the series feels forced. The human drama of the characters is okay and more convincing than the larger apocalyptic picture.

Slightly recommended--I'm glad I finished the show but I'm not really interested in rewatching it.

All three season are currently (October 2020) streaming on Netflix.

TV Review: Glitch Season Two (2017)

Glitch Season Two (2017) created by Louise Fox and Tony Ayres

See my review of the first season here.

The stories continue for the five remaining people who crawled out of their graves without any memories of who they were. Over the first season, memories slowly came back and a few of them were able to piece together at least some of their previous lives and why they died. The piecing together continues in this series, providing closure for at least three of them. Those stories are more of the same mid-level melodrama as they were in the first series.

Some new complications arise in this season. A newly resurrected person shows up and starts hunting down the others. His intent is clear though his purpose is rather vague. He also has some inexplicable powers that no other resurrected people have. Those powers are mystifying and are never satisfactorily explained. His character seems to exist solely to make the story more dramatic. Unfortunately, he also makes it less sensible. I was hoping by the end of the season there'd be some answers, but it's all left frustratingly vague.

Another complication that seems to be introduced only to heighten the drama is the border beyond which the initial resurrected cannot pass without dying again. The border begins to shrink while at the same time the newly resurrected people (there's more than the executioner) are not effected at all. Why some are limited and some are not is also never explained and it's hard to come up with a reason to explain it. The whole process of resurrection is given a veneer of science, but it's so unconvincing that it becomes distracting and unsatisfying.

The show was already just barely above average in the first season. I was sad to see it slip down as the second season went on. I hoped that things would make more sense by the end but that hope was unfulfilled.

Not recommended.

If you must watch it, the series is streaming on Netflix. It's not available on DVD in America.

TV Review: Glitch (2015)

Glitch (2015) created by Tony Ayres and Louise Fox

One night, six people literally dig their way out of their graves in Yoorana, Australia. The local police officer, James Hayes, is called out for a disturbance in the cemetery and at first he assumes they are some drunk people being weird and vandalizing graves. He calls in the local doctor, Elishia McKellar, for assistance. The people are all in perfect health except they have no memories of who they are. After they are cleaned up, Hayes recognizes one of them as his wife who died two years ago from cancer. The others all died at different times (one of them is Paddy Fitzgerald, the original mayor of Yoorana back in the 1800s) under different circumstances. The officer and the doctor don't want word to get out about the resurrections, partly from worry that the six will become scientific guinea pigs, partly from personal connections. The people themselves want answers, especially as they slowly recover their memories and realize they have unresolved issues to deal with. The show is more like the French series Les Revenants, with its interpersonal dramas and search for meaning about what has happened, and less like The Walking Dead, which has personal dramas but also plenty of gore and mayhem. Zombies aren't the enemy here.

While the initial premise is interesting, the plot moves slowly and becomes more and more conventional. The most interesting problem is Hayes's, who has subsequently married his dead wife's best friend. His new wife is about to give birth, which brings up a lot of issues for all three of them. The other story lines are more run-of-the-mill and seem randomly thrown together. Most of the story lines don't resolve by the end of the six-episode series. Clearly the makers hoped to get another season, which has gone into production as of January 2017. The release date has not been announced as of July 2017.

Glitch is a not bad but not amazing show currently streaming on Netflix. Maybe it will come to Amazon? I've provided a link that should update when a DVD becomes available in the US Amazon store.