Stephen King Praises Criminally Underrated Zombie Spinoff Series on Netflix, Labeling It “Existential hell in the suburbs”
We are living in an age of endless content at our fingertips. The streaming era has opened the floodgates, revealing an embarrassment of riches. While it used to be that a few major networks and a collection of deep cable channels were our only options for watching a television series, we now have those same linear channels plus an abundance of streamers, all competing for our attention.
These days, there’s so much programming to choose from that it’s almost overwhelming to try to make a decision. I often find myself freezing when it comes to committing to a new show. Diving into a series is a substantial time commitment, and I don’t take that lightly. That’s why I often rely heavily on recommendations from friends, family members … and Stephen King.
King is forever consuming content and sharing his honest reactions on social media. I recently unearthed an X (formerly Twitter) post in which the Misery author extols the praises of a lesser-known Netflix zombie series called Black Summer.
Here’s what King has to say about Black Summer:
The program functions as a prequel to the zombie series Z Nation, which ran for five seasons on SyFy. Black Summer takes place at the onset of the outbreak, whereas Z Nation begins roughly three years into the madness.
Jaime King toplines Black Summer as Rose, a mother searching for her daughter, Anna (Zoe Marlett), amidst the chaos of the zombie apocalypse. Rose spends much of the first season on a relentless quest to reunite with Anna.
Black Summer ran for a grand total of two seasons, producing 16 episodes in all. Like Z Nation, the series is produced by The Asylum. Although The Asylum is best known for schlocky mockbusters and outlandish creature features, they appealed to a different audience with Z Nation and Black Summer. Both shows feature strong production values and their fair share of original ideas.
Black Summer is self-contained enough that you don’t need to be familiar with Z Nation to appreciate it. However, if you check out Black Summer and want to segue into Z Nation thereafter, you can find Z Nation streaming via a variety of ad-supported VOD platforms. As Black Summer is a Netflix original, the Netflix platform functions as the show’s exclusive home.
Black Summer is co-created by Karl Schaefer and John Hyams. Schaefer is also responsible for co-creating Z Nation with Craig Engler.
Categorized: Streaming News
