The most popular basic cable show on TV "The Walking Dead" is about how humans deal with life in an unstable world where people die and inexplicably come back as nasty, biting zombies.
ABC's latest drama "Resurrection" debuting Sunday (March 9) at 9 p.m. features a group of people coping with loved ones who come back to life without explanation. The results are far less ugly and bloody - but still perplexing and intriguing.
Both shows are coincidentally shot in metro Atlanta. "Resurrection"' producers used a home in Norcross for key scenes and the town square to emulate Arcadia, Mo. Other scenes were shot in McDonough, Covington and EUE Screen Gems last year for an eight-episode run.
Aaron Zelman, an executive producer ("Damages"), said the show is set in Missouri. Fortunately, he said, Atlanta has enough neighborhoods that can be a proxy for a small Midwestern town. He was also able to flood a wheat field and make it resemble China rice paddies with a bit of CGI magic for the opening scene.
In "Resurrection," Omar Epps ("House") is the biggest name star playing an immigration agent Bellamy who is told an eight-year-old American boy Jacob was mysteriously found in the rice paddies of China. The twist: the boy died 32 years earlier but he has no memory of how it happened - and he hasn't aged a day. So when Epps character brings Jacob to his parents (Kurtwood Smith of "That 70s Show" fame and Frances Fisher from "Titanic") in Arcadia, they react with a mix of shock, suspicion and disbelief.
Soon after Jacob arrives, others begin returning from the dead as well. Some townsfolk try to accept and live with this new, disorienting reality. Others freak out, wondering if these returnees are for real. Over the first two episodes, the greater world hasn't found out this is happening. Once they do, this quiet little town would never quite be the same.
The entire concept is based on a popular book by Jason Mott "The Returned." (The show was originally called 'The Returned," but a French drama on a similar topic debuted last year on the Sundance Channel.)
Zelman said in 2010, he went through a divorce and struggled with loss and grief. He eventually came out of the darkness, found a new woman and remarried. "I discovered a lot about myself through the process," he said. "Then I read this book. At first, I thought it was about science fiction. Then I realized it wasn't science fiction at all. It was a story about getting over loss - or not getting over it. It's universal. People lose others through death and divorce all the time. This book is a surprising and interesting examination of those feelings."
He decided to transfer those feelings onto the TV screen though he said many of the characters on his show are not in the book. "The book is a starting off point," he said (similar to CBS's "Under the Dome" vs. its original Stephen King novel and "The Walking Dead" TV show vs. the graphic novels.) In the book, people are returning all over the world. On his TV show, Jacob is the initial, isolated situation.
Zelman wants to capture the mixed feelings of anyone who may suddenly have a person they had let go come back into their lives. The parents in the show "may be overjoyed in one sense but this 'new' child just reminds them of all the grief they went through the first time around," he said.
And for the father, played by Smith, his past 32 years was a lesson in sadness. He had retreated. He had become a shell of his former self after the death of his son. When Jacob returns, he's forced to look at his life and realize he's been "stuck in grief. Here's an opportunity to heal from the wounds of that initial loss," Zelman said.
Epps, in an interview, said he is the "eyes and ears of the audience, the outsider." He is viewed with wariness by many in the close-knit town. He ends up having emotional, protective feelings toward Jacob, even recommending at one point that the parents pretend he's not their son but a relative instead to protect him from scrutiny. He also learns to like the town itself as he tries to keep the situation "contained, but he can only do that for so long."
Apparently, Jacob's initial death in the early 1980s caused a family and their business to crumble, Zelman said. "It's a measure of a human life," he said. "You can see all the ways this young boy's death affected people in the town."
He also spends time looking at the people themselves who disappeared and how they are dealing with a world that has moved on without them.
Zelman understands that shows with a supernatural bent are risky. When do you start answering the why? "Our job as story tellers," Zelman said, "is to make that less important. We want viewers to care about the characters. That's the challenge. That's the meat of the show."
He hopes the fact ABC is debuting it in relatively fallow period (March) will be to its advantage. "We always felt like ours is a very quiet show in many ways," he said, so the placement of the show is fitting.
Indeed, the show has more of an AMC feel than a lot of what ABC is shelling out right now in terms of cartoonish soapy shows like "Revenge" and "Scandal." The pacing is slower, the characters more nuanced. Is this the right home for the show? We shall see soon enough.
TV preview
"Resurrection," 9 p.m., Sunday, March 9, ABC
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