If you have yet to encounter Charlie Brooker, columnist, broadcaster and tv commentator, then you are missing out on some glorious venom from a very funny and intelligent human.

He is known for his guardian column and his BBC show screen wipe, both of which are generally concerned with tv and the media. In his reviews Brooker manages to somehow combine an obvious love of the medium with seething contempt for anything he considers obvious or unoriginal.

He often focuses his glare on shows that he clearly enjoys, yet he can still point out the flaws and weak points, or he might just ruin 24 for you by pointing out how much Tony looks like action man. Whether he is dissecting the latest drama, debating the merits of Britainnia High or just enlightening us on the realities of the industry he is always hilarious and never holds back.

Considering the above you might think he would shy away from risking his reputation by making his own fictional TV shows, but fans of Nathan Barley might suspect he had the talent to succeed in the difficult sounding task of making a reality TV show based zombie drama, Dead Set.

The show used the premise that during the production of Big Brother the zombie disaster we have all been trained to expect broke out, and due to their confinement the BB housemates are safe from and initially unaware of the chaos outside.

Not only does this work well by introducing zombies into a familiar format and location, but probably made the show cheaper to produce as they were no doubt able to re-use a lot of set and in the case of zombie-Davina and a number of the ex-housemates they even re-used the talent.

After the initial shock factor of OMG it’s a like a zombie movie but in Big Brother wears off it relaxes into a fairly standard, post zombie infection story, but of surprisingly high quality for TV. The use of fast zombies and some good shaky camera work (I think that is the technical term) enabled them to avoid making a cheap parody of a zombie film, and there are some genuinely scary, jumping on your couch moments.

The great script and decent performances by the cast don’t hurt, and while many of them do fall into traditional zombie film roles we get a few treats, as we are treated to some wonderfully disgusting dialogue and behaviour from the less admirable (but more awesome) survivors.

As a zombie film fan (and less proud big brother victim) I came to this fully expecting to hate it, but was totally won round and not just by the geeky Manchester morgue type references, just by a show made my someone who clearly understands the genre.

My only real criticism would be that the show ended a bit too soon for me, and I would have enjoyed a few more episodes. If you haven’t already go read and watch as much of Brooker’s stuff as you can, assuming you are not easily offended.

Screenwipe clip