Although Zombie Finished in 2019, the five-season supernatural procedural managed to reinvigorate the familiar cop show setup with its inventive premise. Crime shows make up a substantial portion of TV's scripted offerings. According to The Hollywood ReporterAbout a fifth of 2020's scripted TV shows were police procedurals, and that number was atypically low compared to previous years. This makes it difficult for networks to reinvent the police procedural, a genre that has been subverted, rebooted, revisited and built upon for decades on end. Fittingly, the series Zombie successfully breathed new life into crime shows in 2015.
Although Zombie Season 6 never happened, the show was critically acclaimed and ran for five seasons that garnered solid ratings. Starring Rose McIver as Olivia “Liv” Moore, Zombie was a crime drama with a unique premise. Its heroine, Liv, was a medical resident who became a zombie and used her condition to help solve crimes. As an assistant at the King County morgue, she ate the brains of murder victims and temporarily absorbed their personalities. This allowed Liv, along with her colleague Ravi and her police accomplice Clive, to solve murders in ZombieIt's a loose comic book adaptation.
iZombie's Brainy Trick Meant Liv Was a Different Character Every Episode
Rose McIver's heroine absorbed different personalities in each outing
What did you do Zombie worked so well was the fact that from iZombie the heroine Liv was a different person in each new episode. The show's protagonist never became tiresome, as each outing revolved around her absorbing a new person's personality. From a widow to a frat brother to a dominatrix to a sniper, the people whose murders Liv investigated were widely varied. This allowed each episode of Zombie to give McIver the opportunity to stretch her comedic muscles as a versatile actress, and the contrast between Liv's natural personality and that of her last meal was often hilariously pronounced.
Law and Order and Brooklyn Nine-Nine could never change all of its main characters' personalities on a dime.
What it does Zombie an underrated zombie comedy series is the show's ability to reinvigorate both the police procedural setting and the zombie horror subgenre. While both formats have their fans, there's no denying that they run the risk of becoming stale thanks to repetition. Even if viewers love Stabler and Benson or Jake Peralta and Amy Santiago, Law and Order and Brooklyn Nine-Nine I could never change all of these characters' personalities on a dime. Likewise, even the best zombie horror films rarely manage to reinvent the lowly zombies themselves. However, Zombie performed both of these impressive tricks.
Liv's different “brains” ensured that iZombie would never become boring
An ever-changing detective made iZombie an exceptionally eventful procedural
As Zombie continued, Liv's personal relationships have become as important as her crime-solving skills. However, whenever the personal drama between Clive, Ravi, Liv, and Liv's roommate Peyton became too intense, the series always had its ingenious premise to fall back on. While other crime procedurals have had to create increasingly elaborate stories to keep their individual episodes exciting, Zombie I just needed to find another intriguing person for Liv to show off. In season four alone, Liv became a bodyguard, socialite, actress, and professional ward whose job it was to teach the art of seduction.
Rose McIver played a different character in each episode, as well as consistently maintaining Liv's personality between cases.
This diversity of roles depended heavily on McIver's central performance, but it was worth it. ZombieMcIver's inventive sci-fi comedy gave McIver more to do than his later role on the CBS sitcom Ghostsas the actor played a different character in each episode, as well as consistently maintaining Liv's personality between cases. Balancing personal drama and creative, silly cases was tricky for the DC series, but the show's reliable criminal procedural structure ensured that Zombie took it away. Notably, this wasn't the first DC series to feature the format.
iZombie wasn't the only show to turn a DC comic into a criminal procedural
iZombie's approach was borrowed from other DC comics shows
While they were successful comic book adaptations first and foremost, many of DC's biggest TV shows have gone the procedural route. Lucifer was a classic cop show, although its central cop was admittedly a bit unusual, while The Flash generally followed the crime drama model as much as it relied on a more straightforward superhero series format. Until Arrow borrowed from police drama procedurals for its beat, resulting in a show whose tone owed as much to NCIS and CSI like the Superman and Spider-Man films.
However, Zombie was unique in its ability to reinvent both the crime drama format and the zombie story. What did you do ZombieWhat was so perfect for fans of both seemingly unrelated genres was the seamless integration of horror tropes into what would otherwise be an atypically grisly crime procedural. Liv looked nothing like most zombies, but occasionally reminded viewers that she was among the undead, while Zombie it provided all the fun of a classic crime procedural while also feeling entirely new and different thanks to its premise.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter