The Returned (2015)

What Cuse and Tucker have done best is maintain the eerie tone and feel from the original.

There are a lot of characters and talent involved here--Mary Elizabeth Winstead notably plays the bride who was left behind--but The Returned is very much a show propelled forward by its story and the questions it raises.

Though his [Carlton Cuse's] version is not quite as eerie and enigmatic as the French version, it's still pretty dang eerie and enigmatic, particularly for those watching the story unfold for the first time.

The final sequence in the premiere doesn’t quite work like it did in the original, and the small-town atmosphere of dread isn’t quite the same, but these are minor complaints for a surprisingly effective drama.

All told, a heavily crowded series, stuffed with characters and interwoven tales of vengeance, betrayal, murder--unyielding in its darkness, unfailing in its power to hold you in its grip.

An artfully engrossing remake. [9-16 Mar 2015, p.13]

For those who haven’t seen the source material, this will be a fun, exciting journey, and you can be assured that you are in capable, firmly non-French, hands.

The cast mines genuine heartache in the mysterious.

As a mystery, it's still compelling. but not quite as deep. [13 Mar 2015, p.64]

The Returned is little more than a nimble translation, but the material is strong enough to reward its staunch fidelity.

The critical success of the original “Returned,” as well as brainier zombie shows such as BBC America’s “In the Flesh,” has spawned other American knockoffs, such as ABC’s “Resurrection,” the kind of series that reminds us that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but only if it’s done as well as A&E’s The Returned.

Cuse and Tucker (the latter also worked on True Blood) do a good job of translating the deeply unsettling miracle at the heart of this show.

The Returned has the nightmarish quality of a ghost story, but could benefit from some of Norma Bates' frenzied energy.

Ennenga (last seen in “Treme”), Wright and Pellegrino are in a way the show’s emotional linchpins, and they’re very good at capturing the mix of relief and confusion the situation elicits.

Slow and mournful, The Returned is interesting but not, in the early going, enormously compelling.

Mood is key with a fantastical show like this one, but while the new series is far from terrible, it also feels a little soulless. This partly has to do with the cast, largely made up of journeyman actors with little individual presence.

Possibly because it works so hard to mimic the original’s gloomy restraint, The Returned feels strained.

This version has a brisker pace than the fine French original, though it wouldn’t be called action-packed. With its ominous and dark undertone, call it cerebral sci-fi.

The original French version of The Returned embraced spooky stillness, and the American version attempts to do this, too, but succeeds to a lesser extent. And while there’s at least a language barrier reason for remaking the French version of “The Returned”--unlike Fox’s “Gracepoint,” a remake of BBC America’s English-language “Broadchurch”--that’s still not enough creative justification for this identical, second version of the same show to exist.

A serviceable but mostly by-the-numbers remake of a brilliantly nuanced French series.

Take away the various visual, audio and tonal flourishes that distinguished the original, and you have a bunch of familiar American actors--the cast also includes Mark Pellegrino, Jeremy Sisto, Kevin Alejandro and Michelle Forbes--standing around slack-jawed, demonstrating minimal curiosity over why this is happening and what it means.

It's almost a shot-for-shot remake of the original, but that's not what makes this version a derivative TV zombie. It's the lack of atmosphere and the near-complete absence of a mournful, mysterious tone that makes the new version feel empty and hollow.