Genre in Les Revenants

Les Revenants (The Returned):
French supernatural drama television series
Create by Fabrice Gobert
Based on a french film They Come Back (Zombie Horror)
Shown on Channel 4
2 series, 8 episodes each

Genres within Les Revenants
Sci-fi - things happen that don't happen in real life, supernatural
Drama - Serious tone, very niche typically French style conventions
Horror - typical conventions, little boy, fear of children, gory stabbing scene in alleyway
Avent-garde - arthouse, very forward thinking
French - moody, lowkey, stylistic, based on french culture
Zombie - characters coming back from the dead

Cult TV
small passionate fanbase/community, not mainstream
Examples: Buffer the Vampire Slayer, The Wire, Grand Budapest Hotel
**Could argue that The Returned was Cult tv as it had a small passionate fanbase.

Zombie Genre:
Settings - Always abandoned (landscapes, shopping hall, houses)
Characters - typically, hero/leader, victim that is saved, villain zombie characters
Examples - Zombieland, World War Z, I am Legend, The Walking Dead, Shean of the Dead
Narrative - Typically Todorov Narrative style, equilibrium, disequilibrium, resolution, sometimes fragmented, with flashbacks, reflects past coming back to haunt you.
Themes - Violence, Lawless, Death vs Life, Survival, Rising from the dead, 
Cinematography - dusk shooting

The zeitgeist from The Returned captured a feeling of tension at the time, the fear of an unknown invader, (people coming back from the dead) At the time, many refugees and immigrants were coming to France, and politicians were adamant to reduce this. Could argue this tension represents what lead to the Paris attacks of November 2015. Les Revenants was a media product to recreate these ideologies in an allegorical way.

French Poetic Realism:

• Poetic realism was a film movement in France of the 1930s. 
• They usually have a fatalistic view of life with their characters living on the margins of society, either as unemployed members of the working class or as criminals. 
• After a life of disappointment, the characters get a last chance at love but are ultimately disappointed again and the films frequently end with disillusionment or death.
•  The overall tone often resembles nostalgia and bitterness. 
• They are "poetic" because of a heightened aestheticism that sometimes draws attention to the representational aspects of the films.