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Writer worried The Returned would kill off Glitch

When she saw The Returned, writer Louise Fox was worried it would spell the end for her new drama.

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When she first saw The Returned and Resurrection, Louise Fox -co-creator of Glitch– feared it would mean the end of the project she had been developing with Tony Ayres.

“To be frank, I felt that once those shows happened, ‘Oh, well we’re dead in the water’ and that we wouldn’t happen. But I do think this is a genre of shows now, in a way. The more those shows happened, in some ways the better it was for us because our points of difference are so clear,” she tells TV Tonight.

“The first script was written before I even saw the French film of The Returned which their series is based on. So all our story and mythology was in place, and there wasn’t really much overlap.

“So we just kept on going, and then everyone got behind it.”

While the themes were clearly in the zeitgeist, Fox became a fan of The Returned, but concedes less enthusiasm for Resurrection.

“My son was like, ‘You’re not watching that shit again?’ I was just like, ‘Ohh!’ I actually didn’t watch the end of it. It was terrible!

“But Glitch is just so Aussie, it’s actually very different from the French Returned, which I loved. I thought was brilliant but, like the French, it was very cool. I guess I think that this show is very passionate and very warm.

“I’m not sure I felt a lot watching The Returned. I don’t know. I think this is just we’re aiming straight for the heart in this.”

“Genre found me”

Fox, who has also written for Broadchurch, Camelot, Love My Way, Rush and The Kettering Incident, was never a fan of genre work. But that all changed after watching shows like Battlestar Galactica and Lost.

Lost was really important. An unapologetically philosophical piece of work on mainstream television. I mean what it was concerned with, what its thematic concerns were incredible. I’m a really big unapologetic Lost fan. So now I watch a lot of genre,” she admits.

“I didn’t start off in genre at all, genre found me. I was total Relationship Drama writer and that was my universe, and I was quite suspicious of genre, I guess. Then I started to watch it and loved it. The stakes are so big and the stories are massive and it actually elevates everything.

“It’s just such a brilliant playground. So now, I’m like, “Bring it on, any genre!’”

“We do answer one of them”

She describes Glitch as a paranormal saga with the mystery element as the driving force. Across its six episodes characters in a rural town rise, inexplicably, from graves. But as other high-concept shows seek second and third seasons, will Glitch resolve its unanswered questions or leave viewers dangling?

“That’s is absolutely the question that came up for us. So my feeling is that you’ve got a series of questions, which are: who, how, what? And all I can tell you is that we don’t answer all of those questions, but we do answer one of them. So one of those key questions, in the big W’s, is answered, quite satisfyingly, I think,” says Fox.

“You want people to love your show and to invest in your characters, and actually, I haven’t finished telling the story. I think there’s more story to be told, for all of them.”

Glitch airs 8:30pm Thursdays on ABC and is available on iview.

9 Responses

  1. The original French film was released in 2004! I think Glitch suffered from the various remakes and similar shows. After a film and a book and two series not to mention, In The Flesh, Life after Beth, Warm Bodies etc that the idea should have been dead and buried. I didn’t both watching because the concept was stale.

  2. “I was total Relationship Drama writer and that was my universe.”

    That would explain the soap opera plotting in Glitch, where people shout at each other about infidelity a lot. C’mon, seriously, can’t just one writer in this country write something that isn’t a soap opera?

  3. Well I hope there is another season otherwise I wasted my time watching six episodes to get absolutely no answers as to why dead people dig their way out of graves. Was really disappointed with the final ep.

  4. I wish she’d referred to the original returned as Les Revenants as it’s confusing which ones she is referring to by constantly saying The Returned.

    Looking forward to watching this on iview to see how it holds up against all the other ‘zombie but they are not zombies’ series. In The Flesh was my absolute favourite, beautifully done, very clever & touching. Les Revenants was brilliant but a very different type of story, it was more of a mystery than the other z shows.

  5. Very interesting – yes, understandable to presume that Glitch is a sort of copycat version , inspired by shows of the same genre such as The Returned.
    Have obviously being sitting on it for a long time.
    Am really enjoying Glitch and its local slant on the theme and hope there is a second season.
    But The Returned is still by far and away my favourite.

    Agree with Louise’s son though about Resurrection being absolute crap.

  6. Bugger, keep forgetting to watch this. All 6 eps are up on iView so I’ll binge them this w/e.

    Agree, Les Revenants was great, didn’t watch the remake, and lasted 4½ eps of Resurrection before realising that it was only going to get worse not better.

  7. I’m enjoying Glitch too. I like how the ABC are branching out from relationship-type dramas into other genres. Keep up the good work ABC – always enjoying what you deliver (except for Hiding of course which was woeful). Thanks for the article David.

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