The old eat the young. That is the back-of-a-beermat pitch for new Channel 4 drama Generation Z. And because the Z stands for zombie, the eating is meant literally. “I loved the idea of a horror story about societal breakdown, told from the perspective of different generations,” says its writer-director Ben Wheatley. “Once I started writing it, I couldn’t stop.”
The film-maker’s first original series for TV begins with an army convoy crashing outside a care home. The subsequent chemical leak turns the residents into marauding monsters who attack local youngsters. “It’s a bit of a Brexit metaphor,” admits Wheatley. “But it’s by no means binary. We discuss it from each generation’s viewpoint, exploring the notion that boomers have ruined the lives of the young. Because it’s a genre piece, that’s basically by biting their hands and eating their brains.”
The teen protagonists of this apocalyptic satire are already confronted with mounting student debt, poor job prospects and no hope of home ownership. Now they’ve got to fight off flesh-eating pensioners, too. “I’d never written for teenagers before and I really enjoyed it,” says Wheatley. “I wanted to make a coming-of-age gang show like Buffy, Skins or Scooby-Doo. Having adventures and facing challenges. Meanwhile, the old people are having a mirrored experience.”
It’s the characters in between, the parents and teachers, who get caught in the crossfire. “Gen X are more harried and miserable,” laughs the 52-year-old from Billericay, ruefully acknowledging that’s where he fits in. “They’re essentially the filling in the generational sandwich.”
From the care home setting to the soldiers trying to contain the outbreak without proper PPE, parallels with the Covid pandemic are rife. “It’s all in there,” says Wheatley. “We first discussed this project in 2019. Like with my films, current events tend to find a way into the script.”
As the town comes under siege, the show tackles issues of online misinformation and conspiracy theories. “Everything is built on shifting sands these days,” says Wheatley. “Take what you see on social media at face value and you’re stuffed. No one seems to use phones in films or telly but I wanted to make them integral. They’re such a dramatic part of everybody’s lives. You get life-changing information on your phone: someone’s died or you’re dumped. Doomscrolling should be represented.”
One lad falls under the spell of an Andrew Tate-style toxic masculinity influencer. “It’s interesting how people are broadcasting these mad ideas straight into people’s houses,” says Wheatley. “That’s part of the teen experience now – shuffling through all this content, trying to work out what’s sensible and what’s not. It’s a full-time job.”
Wheatley has carved out an intriguingly eclectic career. He made his name with horror-flavoured indie flicks Kill List, Sightseers and A Field in England. He turned his hand to literary adaptations with JG Ballard’s High-Rise and Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca. He’s dipped his toe into Hollywood with Meg 2: The Trench. Now comes his first British TV project since directing two episodes of Doctor Who a decade ago.
“I love telly and watch a lot of it – Battlestar Galactica, The Sopranos and Deadwood were the golden age for me – so I was keen to play with a different train set,” he says. “It was exciting to write in longer form, rather than the sprint that is a film script. In terms of production values and cinematic scale, TV has closed the gap on film. It’s like the difference between a single and an album. Actors move freely between the two now. The skillset’s no different. Any stigma has long gone.”
Fittingly for a series punctuated by gruesome deaths, he’s assembled a killer cast. Playing the pensioners are veterans such as Sue Johnston and Anita Dobson. “Sue’s first day on set, she was biting someone’s nose off,” he says. “They got to do stuff they don’t usually do, running around covered in gore, and had a blast doing it.” The gore is created the old-fashioned way. “Everything is practical, with prosthetics or models. There are very few CG effects. When arms are ripped off and blood spurts, there are people pumping plasma just out of shot. We use jelly when organs need to be edible. It’s all very visceral.”
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No spoilers but a darkly comic scene in the first episode involving a cockapoo is likely to go viral. “That’s a television first, I think,” says Wheatley. “I purposely chose a cockapoo because it’s the most loved breed of dog. Later in the series, things get progressively more unhinged. There are deaths by javelin and other sporting equipment.”
For Wheatley, the zombie genre endures because it’s actually about community breakdown. “I’ve always thought that zombie films were civil war movies that were too embarrassed to have people killing their neighbours. It’s even clearer when you see Alex Garland’s film Civil War. It allows this fantasy of escaping from your life and shooting everybody who disagrees with you. Everyone’s idly thought about that, which is why zombies don’t go away.”
Two days after we speak, he starts production on Normal, a neo-western thriller starring Bob Odenkirk. “I may or may not also have shot a secret feature film in between Generation Z and Normal,” he says. “Then, if people dig Generation Z, I’d love to do another series. There’s more story to tell.” Not to mention more cockapoo owners to traumatise.
