Santa Clarita Diet – Netflix Season 1 Review

Episode Guide

So Then a Bat or A Monkey
We Can’t Kill People!
We Can Kill People
The Farting Sex Tourist
Man Eat Man
Attention to Detail
Strange or Just Inconsiderate?
How Much Vomit?
The Book!
Baka, Bile and Baseball Bats

Next to vampires, zombies are one of the most over-saturated horror tropes out there. From Z-Nation and The Walking Dead through to the endless shuffle of undead films, there appears to be no end to our fascination with zombies. It’s worth bearing this in mind when it comes to Santa Clarita Diet because essentially this is a series about a Mum who turns into a zombie and has to adjust to her newfound undead life. Armed with a clever wit, surprisingly strong writing and memorable characters, Santa Clarita Diet is a breath of fresh air.

Set in the heart of Santa Clarita, California, the story revolves around the tight-knit Hammond family. Comfortable with their realtor lives, everything is turned upside down when Sheila dies unexpectedly and comes back from the dead. While her husband Joel scrambles to find a cure to her condition, the two juggle Sheila’s insatiable appetite for flesh with his teenager daughter’s impulsive behaviour. As things begin to unravel and their neighbours grow suspicious, things take a surprising turn of events as the season shuffles its way to its open-ended finale.

In many ways, Santa Clarita Diet shares some similarities with The Good Place. The quirky humour and great use of character is ultimately what makes this as endearing as it winds up becoming. Some of the jokes do linger a little longer than necessary and a few of the episodes midway through the season tend to drag on a little but there’s some really nicely worked twists here that keep things feeling fresh and unpredictable. 

Stylistically, the show certainly features a fair amount of gore and those a little squeamish may not take to the buckets of blood and body parts the show throws around in most episodes. Ultimately though, this juxtaposition of grotesque gore and dead bodies works surprisingly well against the quaint, quiet neighbourhood the family live in. Some of the best jokes take advantage of this too with Joel’s normal questions suddenly escalating to panic and swearing highlighting this perfectly.

If you’re in the mood for a good comedy, you can’t really go wrong with Santa Clarita Diet. Some of the recurring jokes are perfectly timed here and a few moments had me laughing out loud. Which is especially memorable given I was on public transport at the time. With a good pacing for the most part and a handful of well written, memorable characters, Santa Clarita Diet manages to do the impossible – add some life to the undead.

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