Santa Clarita Diet Is a Dark Comedy for Those With Strong Stomachs

Santa Clarita Diet is both highly formulaic and also entirely unlike anything you’ve seen on TV before. The new dark comedy, which premieres today on Netflix, stars Drew Barrymore and Timothy Olyphant as Sheila and Joel, a pair of semi-bored married real estate agents living in California whose lives are upended after Sheila suddenly and inexplicably becomes a zombie—her transformation entails a particularly nasty vomiting fit. Suddenly she has more energy than ever and she’s more adventurous, but, of course, she also really wants to eat people.

While a zombie TV show isn’t novel, one in which the undead are portrayed so lightheartedly is definitely a first. When Sheila realizes the only way to satiate her hunger is to eat someone who is still alive (hey, at least she tried eating a corpse), Joel promises she won’t have to do all that ugly murdering alone. After all, these high school sweethearts have always been a team. When they’re plotting who would be acceptable to kill—“I guess the prototype would be young, single Hitler,” he says—and they find out a pedophile has recently moved into their neighborhood? You can’t help but root for them.

In case it wasn’t clear, the tone of Santa Clarita Diet is exaggeratedly deadpan: The show’s humor often recalls other absurdist sitcoms that dealt with suburban ennui, like Weeds, but it mostly reminded me of Tim Burton’s goth classic, Edward Scissorhands. That 1990 movie, about how a gated community reacts to the arrival of a young man who has shears instead of fingers, was a critique of Burton’s isolated upbringing in cookie-cutter Burbank. Santa Clarita Diet instead takes the same premise of a “monster” trapped in suburbia to comment on rampant American consumerism. After Sheila transforms into a zombie, her id becomes unleashed, leading her to make impulsive choices like eating a coworker, but also going ahead and buying a Range Rover on a whim. Throughout the show, there are frequent callouts to brands like Christian Louboutin; kitchens that rival those in Nancy Meyers movies; and large, overpriced houses that remain on the market for years. Sheila’s taste for blood is insatiable, but then so is her neighbors’ for all things shiny and new.

As is the case with most traditional sitcoms, the jokes don’t always land, but it’s mainly when Barrymore and Olyphant aren’t the ones delivering them. The two stars have great chemistry, and it’s their solid comedic timing that can somehow make murder joke after murder joke still seem funny. A word of warning, though: This show is not for the weak of stomach. IIt’s gory and bloody, and it doesn’t ever shy away from showing Sheila chewing on a limb. “This right here is the filet,” she says while pointing to a bit of fleshy palm. I made the mistake of watching the first episode while eating lunch, and not only did I completely lose my appetite, I also started to seriously consider vegetarianism. Perhaps that was the intended goal of this cannibal comedy all along?