Les Revenants (‘The Returned’) is back and fans have their fingers crossed that the show hasn’t lost its magic. In 2012, the French suspense series, created by Fabrice Gobert and produced by Canal +, captured an international audience by bringing humanity to the otherworldly in a way that has rarely been seen on television. The nearly perfect Emmy award winning series has been on hiatus for two years and in the meantime some of the characters have grown up (can dead people grow up?) and an American remake has come and gone (after being largely pooh poohed by critics). We are hoping the same attraction and mystery are still there to ignite the spark.
Les Revenants takes place in a small mountainside town in France; the shadow of its cloudy peaks, an eerie stage for the fantastic story line. The first scene of the series shows a bus full of teenagers winding their way home from a field trip when boom, they drive straight off a cliff. After a black screen with the words “aujourd‘hui” brings us to the present, ‘Camille’, one of teenagers who was supposed to have died in the crash three years earlier, climbs up from the crash site unscathed. The stage is set. The show slowly begins to reveal a number of dead characters returning to the town in their flesh and blood forms, hoping to resume life where they left off.
The premise may sound simplistic and a bit too ‘fantastic’, but the show’s creator suspends disbelief in the ‘undead’ by focusing on their humanity and intertwining it with the spiritual ghosts of the living. The cinematographer’s use of a stark landscape combined with the soundtrack from Mogwai – which deserves attention in its own right – makes us empathize with the characters on a deeper level. More than most television programs allow.
The recent premiere of season two leaves us mostly delighted but partially concerned about where it is heading. Now that the dead are not a new phenomenon, can the writers maintain the mystery? The series two’s timeline resumes six months after the original season which leaves fans with many questions: Why doesn’t Camille look more like her identical twin sister? Why would anyone stay in this town after these strange occurrences? Rather than the subtle mystery of season one, are we going to start seeing zombies roaming the woods? Perhaps the writers asked themselves these same questions. The production of season two was supposed to start in 2014 but there were problems with the writing process and filming was delayed. 
Either way, if you are already a fan, you are no doubt pumped that the series is back in the hands of the French (there should be a law banning Americans from remaking anything European). If you haven’t already delved into series one, you won’t regret a rainy weekend spent on the first season. Though we can’t make promises about the upcoming season, if the writing and acting have the enchantment of the first, we’ll be continuing our love affair.
Watch the trailer for season 2