iZombie: Brain food for zombie fans

Yes you have to eat brains but there's the advantage of platinum blond hair. Rose McIver is Liv in iZombie.

Somehow, despite being partial to a jolly good zombie romp (or rampage), I've only just caught up with iZombie (TVNZ OnDemand) which I can only put down to having had my, er, fill of blood and gore and autopsies and weirdness on Fortitude.

And speaking of Fortitude - a second series? The makers either learnt nothing from Broadchurch, or their brains have been invaded by parasitic wasps set loose on the world, which is what happens when you go around digging up mammoths from the permafrost.

Anyway, iZombie is - really weirdly, given that it has at least as much blood and gore and even more autopsies than Fortitude - the perfect antidote to Fortitude which was seriously disturbing.

iZombie's great charm, and it has plenty of that, despite featuring a girl zombie, is Liv (our own Rose McIver!) Liv used to be a normal American girl, studying at medical school, with a hunky fiancee, and all of that, until she got bitten by a nasty boy zombie at a party and now she has to eat brains. She has to eat brains because (duh!) if she doesn't she will come over all undead and, like, freaky and covered in scabby things far more revolting than parasitic mammoth wasps.

She now works in the medical examiner's office, in the morgue, for access to the brains. The trickiness of getting at the brains is made easier because her boss is the only one who knows she's a zombie and he, being a geeky sort of medical examiner, is very interested in studying a zombie - and so doesn't mind what she has for lunch.

There is one drawback (or sort of drawback): When she eats a brain she sees what has happened to the dead person and so has flashbacks. Handily, for the storylines, because she eats the brains of people who have died violently, she is able to help the local detective solve murder mysteries. He just thinks she's some sort of kooky psychic.

Also, Liv laments, brains not being the most palatable lunch, they don't take on the flavours of the cuisines of their former owners. So she just gets brains for lunch, every day, and not, say, Chinese or Italian. Mmm, brain pizza, anyone?

The upside of being a brain-eating zombie is that she takes on the skills of the dead person. Hey! Liv can do kung fu! She kung fus a nasty Asian gang leader and takes him down. (Although she later admits she may have resorted to the good old knee in the tender area to finish him off.)

iZombie is sassy and smart and cute and funny, like Liv. It's chocker with terrible jokes. "You are who you eat, right?" And: "What's the that old zombie saying? This is the first day of the rest of your half-dead life."

I'm fairly certain the unfortunate ad placement for Campbell's Real Stock - "Want more flavour in your favourite meals?" - was unintentional, but it made me laugh.

There is one other upside of being a zombie: You go platinum blond, overnight. Cool. I loved it.

- TimeOut