Flesh-eating baby-boomers get a taste for teenagers in Ben Wheatley's darkly comic, outlandishly gory, zombie-horror satire

​Viewers have waited a long time for Generation Z, the new comedy-horror satire about elderly zombies from writer-director Ben Wheatley.

It was first announced back in 2019, but then took a backseat when it seemed like life might be imitating fiction. Wheatley, whose credits include cult movies Kill List, High-Rise and Free Fire, as well as Hollywood sequel Meg 2: The Trench explains: “It needed a rethink when Covid happened – it went from being predictive science fiction to us all living through it, which was weird. It got put away for a bit, then I did The Meg 2 and it came back into focus. A year or so after lockdown, we started to think it was more relevant than it was before…”

Now though, the eagerly anticipated show makes its way on to our screens, just in time for Halloween – and that’s not the only reason it’s going to feel topical.

It’s set in the fictional town of Dambury, where opportunities are scarce and there isn’t a lot going on.

Teenage friends Charlie (Jay Lycurgo), Kelly (Buket Kömür), Finn (Viola Prettejohn) and Steff (Lewis Gribben) pass the time by drinking, dealing with their complex relationships and largely ignoring their A-Level prep.

Then an army convoy overturns outside a care home, and a chemical leak starts to have an adverse effect on the residents. In tonight’s opening episode, the gang abruptly find themselves at the centre of the virus when Kelly’s nan Janine (Anita Dobson) becomes infected and attacks her.

A series in which baby boomers literally try to eat the young is clearly putting a gory twist on the tensions between the generations, but Wheatley believes that zombie movies have always reflected fears about the breakdown of communities.

He says: “I’ve always thought the zombie film is a gussied-up version of a civil war movie. It’s difficult to make a civil war movie because you have binary sides which you have to define; when you define one side as the dead, it’s easier not to feel bad about them being shot.”

But while Generation Z may have a point to make about modern society, it’s also set to be a lot of fun, not least because of the amazing cast.

Wheatley says: “I also got to work with absolute icons like Anita Dobson, Robert Lindsay and Sue Johnston. Meeting Dobson was a geeky, amazing moment, and I’d written references to [Lindsay’s Citizen Smith character] Wolfie Smith into the script without even thinking about it, so I couldn’t believe it became a possibility that Robert might work on it.”

It seems the cast threw themselves into the roles too. Wheatley says: “Yeah, they were up for anything. Apart from being consummate professionals, nothing could phase them. There was a lot of make-up for Sue in particular, hours and hours of it, which was a bit irksome for her, but she was brilliant. Her first day on set was biting someone’s nose off. It was fantastic!

If that’s already got you excited, the good news is you won’t have to wait too long for the next episode – it airs tomorrow.