candrellbishop The Erie town this takes place in sets the tone for the show! I have watched the entire first 2 seasons in 43 hours! The suspense, mystery and just the right amount of horror sets this series aside from most! Excellent show!!! The American remake is not so great.

gridoon2018 There are some things I do appreciate about "The Returned": the mood (sometimes poetic), the music (great), the acting (apart from the little boy, whom I absolutely can not stand) and the complexity (uncompromising - on a par with "Twin Peaks"). But on the whole I would not recommend this series. There is another thing on a par with "Twin Peaks" - the pacing. It's slow. It's unbearably slow. It's as slow as a funeral (appropriately?). The first season at least has a dramatic center (the difficulty of both the living and the dead to adjust to the new reality), but the second season lacks purpose. The whole series is one big tease: for every 10 questions/paradoxes, you get 1 answer/explanation - if you're lucky. It asks much more from the viewer than it gives back. **1/2 out of 4.

strifnos This show has it all!!!!Drama - mystery - Sifi - and yes horror!!!!All in the correct dosage.I usually get bored easily then TV shows go around the main plot developing the characters, but man, the characters of this show are so interesting!!!!I cant believe i have never heard of this show. Even after i watched the first 3 episodes of the American version and got bored to death, i didn't know there was a Frenchversion. I only found out about it now that the new season begins.The plot evolves nicely, and when the episode ends you cant wait to start the next one. I recommend it to everyone.

dholliday No spoilers here, just some casual references to the themes.The Returned has a few issues which prevent it from being great: the cast's facial expressions are almost-permanently overwrought with bedraggled despair. It gets tiring after a while, and makes it harder to connect with the characters.the music is bland elevator electronica, with the same 4 or 5 motifs repeated every few minutes, not really fitting the mood...and no variation for different episodes.the post-Lost trend to add mysteries wrapped in enigmas for the sake of it only works if we can really care for potential answers. That's not quite the case here, and don't expect much in the way of answers anyway.there are many moments of standard telly soap-opera: for example tropes like a love triangle where two are being affectionate while the other just happens to look on from a distance - there's also tortured emo-prancing which is one very small step removed from Twilight's Bella & Edward.It's not all bad, tho': I like how there are no obvious good & evil characters, tho' this is nothing new nowadays, and this shading is taken to distastefully extreme levels by portraying a certain disturbed character as sympathetic later in the series.it is agreeably watchable, its mood & rhythms remind me of Twin Peaks sometimes, but it lacks the sharp humour and memorable surrealism.the acting is good, if limited by the script and direction.there's some decent camera work, quality dialogue and solid (if a bit archetypal) characterisation.the story and its development is genuinely interesting.it's not English. I enjoy delving into other-language dramas...gives us a sense of something culturally fresh. Original audio with subs is a must, of course...dubs almost always ruin the intended vibe.Broadly recommended if you don't mind the aforementioned negative points.