Looking for an original crime series? In “Dead End,” a potential standout at this week’s Canneseries, sleuth Ed Bex is able to glimpse a dead person’s final moments by licking or even better eating a little part of their corpse. He spends much of Ep. 2 trying to steal a toe from murder victim 2 from out of the mortuary and store it at his family home for a moment when he can get a little nibble.
Highly palatable for crime drama connoisseurs from a director championed by Walter Presents, which bought her “Tabula Rasa” for the U.K., “Dead End,” produced by Lompvis and Caviar, has just been acquired by Federation for international distribution.
It could not be described as comfy crime. Playing in Canneseries main competition on April 27,“Dead End” is likely to build yet more the reputation of creator Malin-Sarah Gozin whose “Clan” (2012) was adapted into Apple TV’s “Bad Sisters” while follow-up “Tabula Rasa” (2017), a horror thriller/suspense drama acquired by Netflix.
Like “Clan,” a comedic murder thriller and family drama, “Dead End” weighs in as a multi-genre blender, braiding again comedic crime mystery with a mid-life crisis drama as Ed turns 50 wondering about his life’s purpose and saddled with a macabre gift he never asked for.
Produced by Caviar and Lompvis, backed by Flanders’ free-to-air service Play4 and streamer Streamz, “Dead End” stars Peter Van den Begin (“1985”), reuniting with Gozin after “Tabula rasa” as the hang-dog Ed Bex and Elise Schaap (“Undercover”) as a forensic pathologist sympathetic to Ed’s singular line in detective work. Bowing on Play4 and Streamz this February, has drawn bullish and sometimes gleeful reviews: “Finger-licking good,” announced Knack Focus.
Variety caught Gozin before she will be the subject of a Meet With conversation at Canneseries on April 27, along with Brett Baer and David Finkel, “Bad Sisters” co-creators and writer-producers of “3o Rock” and “United States of Tara” and executive producers of “Dead End” along with Bert Hamelinck and Dimitri Verbeeck. Gozin directed with Hans Vercauter.
“Dead End” is a genre blender – one of your hallmarks – but also a social-issue show, addressing animal food consumption. Do you feel there’s a through-line, however, with “Clan” and “Tabula Rasa”?
Malin-Sarah Gozin: When I was writing “Dead End,” it felt like I was visiting “Clan” again in terms of the specific genre blend. It has the mystery, thriller combined with drama, psychological depth and character study like “Tabula Rasa” but it felt really good to visit the quirky dark comedy again – which is a great tool for tackling social issues.
But does “Clan” have such a social issue edge? “Dead End’s” early stretches begin to suggest that this is a murder mystery, but maybe the real murderers, although they don’t realize it, are people who eat animal meat or fish….
It’s actually the question I want to address: ‘What if we’re the serial killers of our planet?’ I don’t want to tell people: ‘Stop eating meat!’ I’m not vegetarian myself. But Ed’s gift is like a metaphor for what’s happening in the world. Over the last couple of years, we’ve become more conscious, or should be becoming more conscious, of our food and its impact on animal welfare and on our climate.
Ed himself has a sense of being fated….
If I wanted to explore anything, it was the theme of expiration, like an expiration date. As a grief counsellor, Ed traces people’s final moments but the show asks whether our planet has an expiration date, or is there an expiration date on relationships? Ed’s stuck in a dead end in his marriage and his using his special gifts to help catch a killer will have a serious impact on his marriage.
You could call Ed odd and indeed Belgian shows are hailed for their oddness but I wonder if that’s because the bar is lower in terms of expressing the quirky oddness of most human beings?
The bar is lower in terms of culture. We just say what we think. Belgians, just in our genes, are pretty quirky. We’re the kind of people who came up with “The Smurfs” [which began as a Belgian comic franchise]. If you look at our culture, our art, Magritte, it’s a bit surrealistic. We’re flirting with more like the irrational things, trying to explain the irrational, getting a grip on reality, I guess.
Do you have any explanation to Belgium having five series in Canneseries’ Official Selection, more than any other country in the world, including the U.S. and France? Clan was made available on demand from British broadcaster Channel 4 as part of its Walter Presents service. Then there was a lot of talk of Belgian Noir at 2016 Series Mania with “Hotel Beau Séjour” and “The Break.” But is there now a new wave?
Talk of Belgian Noir began I think with “Clan” and thanks to Walter Iuzzolino who explored our industry, the quirkiness but also the quality. We have no big budget, so we try to make most out of it. The more you invest in story and characters and writing, the better material. Most of the shows you’re mentioning are specifically shows that really took their time in story and character development, and not just writing one version of the script, but improving it and trying to say many interesting things in a very economical way.
In terms of direction, it’s rather like Pedro Almodóvar meets Aki Kaurismaki a kind of muted pop out aesthetic….
It’s very intentional. We wanted in “Dead End” not just a cinematic quality but also a certain kind of aestheticism. The themes and the story are pretty dark, it’s about death. But it’s also very much inspired by food. I love the aesthetic quality that food has, it’s very colorful. “Dead End” is a show with hope, with colorful characters. They’re all troubled but a bit odd and funny.
Dead End
©Toon Aerts
