With my Star Trek rewatch wrapping up, I was looking for something new to watch on Netflix. Enter Glitch. I’d not heard of this show, but the premise seemed intriguing, so I decided to give it a shot. What I discovered was an intriguing, if flawed, series.
So far, only the first season is available, and it’s extremely short (only six episodes), so it seemed to make more sense to review the entire season instead of going episode by episode.
The other walking dead:
Glitch is a show with a simple yet unusual premise. One night, in a small town in rural Australia, a number of dead people claw their way out of their graves. Confused and frightened, they are found by a local police officer named James, and a doctor named Elishia.
They are not zombies. They’re not animate corpses. They appear to have been truly resurrected, restored to life in apparently perfect health.
This despite the fact that all of them have been dead and buried for years. The most newly deceased is Kate, James’ wife, who died of cancer two years previously. The eldest is Patrick Fitzgerald, the town’s founder, who has been dead since the nineteenth century.
In between those extremes are a diverse collection of deceased. The kind and gentlemanly Charlie was a soldier in the First World War. Carlo met his end in the 40s. Maria is a pious Italian housewife who fell in the 1960s. Kirstie was a wild child before her untimely death in the late 80s. One, found in an unmarked grave, has no memories at all and is simply labelled John Doe.
It falls to James and Elishia to hide the Risen (as they are called) as sinister forces begin to seek them out. As for the Risen themselves, they are left to struggle with life after death. Many of them are alone in the world, their friends and family having died long ago, yet for those who still have relations among the living, the path may be harder still.
It’s certainly an interesting premise. I can’t say I’ve ever seen anything quite like it. The mystery is intriguing, but there may be a little too much of it.
You would think that a show with such a short season would waste no time, but in fact Glitch is a very slow-paced show that is very stingy with its answers. Most of the questions you probably have right now if this is your first time hearing about the show are questions I still have, even after seeing every episode.
There is going to be a second season, so there’s still time to explain things, but I don’t like being strung along like this.
It also turn into a bit of a soap opera sometimes. Being who I am, I am of course most interested in the fantastical elements of the show, but Glitch spends more time on interpersonal relationships and who’s sleeping with who this week. It can get a bit tiresome.
Glitch also features my least favourite kind of story: the love triangle. And this is a really good example of why I hate love triangles so much. It takes up a lot of screentime while doing nothing whatsoever to advance the story. It accomplishes nothing but to make every character involved look like a total sleazebag.
On that note, another issue with Glitch is that most of the characters are pretty unlikable. It lessens the drama when you don’t care about half the cast.
The good news is that the characters that I do like, I really like.
By far the highlight of the show is Charlie. His earnest, good-hearted nature does wonders to make the otherwise grim tone of the series easier to bear.
I’m also rather fond of Kirstie. She’s not the most level-headed person, but her spunk can be endearing, and she has one of the better stories in the show. I won’t spoil too much, but the most powerful scene in the season comes from her exploring her tragic past. It’s very powerful.
Patrick grew on me after a while, too. He’s a bit of a lowlife in some ways, but he’s not without his own odd form of charm.
Those three are what carry the show. Even if I’m frustrated by the slow pace or sneering at the rest of the cast, I’m enjoying the stories of Charlie, Kirstie, and Patrick enough to make Glitch worthwhile.
Overall rating: 6.9/10 Probably not going to be your new favourite show, but it might be worth a look if you want to try something different.
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