Although iZombie ended in 2019, the five-season supernatural procedural managed to reinvigorate the familiar cop show setup with its inventive premise. Cop shows make up a substantial portion of TV’s scripted offerings. According to The Hollywood Reporter, around a fifth of 2020’s scripted TV shows were police procedurals, and this figure was atypically low compared to preceding years. This makes it tough for networks to reinvent the police procedural, a genre that has been subverted, rebooted, revisited, and relied upon for decades on end. Appropriately enough, the series iZombie successfully breathed new life into cop shows in 2015.
8 Things Most Fans Don't Know About iZombie's Rose McIver
If you haven't watched the CW's iZombie, you should. Starring actress Rose McIver, who plays Olivia Moore, is just fantastic.
Although iZombie’s loose comic book adaptation.
iZombie’s Brain Gimmick Meant That Liv Was A Different Character Every Episode
Rose McIver’s Heroine Absorbed Different Personalities In Each Outing
What made iZombie work so well was the fact that iZombie’s heroine Liv was a different person in each new episode. The show’s protagonist never became tiresome, since every outing revolved around her absorbing the personality of a new person. From a dowager to a frat bro, to a dominatrix, to a sniper, the people whose murders Liv investigated were widely varied. This allowed each episode of iZombie to give McIver an opportunity to stretch her comedic muscles as a versatile actor, and the contrast between Liv’s natural personality and that of her latest meal was often hilariously pronounced.
Law and Order and Brooklyn Nine-Nine could never change the entire personalities of their main characters on a dime.
What makes iZombie an underrated zombie comedy series is the show’s ability to reinvigorate both the police procedural setup and the zombie horror subgenre. While both of these formats have their fans, there is no denying that they risk staleness thanks to repetition. Even if viewers love Stabler and Benson or Jake Peralta and Amy Santiago, Law and Order and Brooklyn Nine-Nine could never change the entire personalities of these characters on a dime. Similarly, even the best zombie horror movies rarely manage to reinvent the humble zombies itself. However, iZombie pulled off both of these impressive tricks.
Liv’s Different “Brains” Made Sure iZombie Would Never Get Boring
An Ever-Changing Detective Made iZombie A Uniquely Eventful Procedural
As iZombie continued, Liv’s personal relationships became as important as her crime-solving skills. However, whenever the personal drama between Clive, Ravi, Liv, and Liv’s roommate Peyton became too intense, the series always had its ingenious premise to fall back on. While other crime procedurals had to come up with increasingly elaborate storylines to keep their individual episodes feeling exciting, iZombie just needed to come up with another intriguing person for Liv to show down on. Season 4 alone saw Liv become a bodyguard, a socialite, an actress, and a professional wingman whose job was teaching the art of seduction.
Rose McIver played a different character in every episode as well as consistently maintaining Liv’s persona between cases.
This diverse range of roles relied heavily on McIver’s central performance, but this paid off. iZombie’s inventive sci-fi comedy gave McIver more to do than her later role in CBS’s sitcom Ghosts, since the actor played a different character in every episode as well as consistently maintaining Liv’s persona between cases. Balancing personal drama and goofy, creative cases was tricky for the DC series, but the reliable structure of the crime procedural show ensured that iZombie pulled this off. Notably, this was not the first DC series to rely on the format.
iZombie Was Not The Only Show To Turn A DC Comic Book Into A Crime Procedural
iZombie’s Approach Was Borrowed By Other DC Comic Shows
Although they were successful comic book adaptations first and foremost, many of DC’s biggest TV shows followed the procedural route. Lucifer was a textbook cop show, although its central cop was ittedly a little unusual, while The Flash generally followed the crime drama template as much as it relied on a more straightforward superhero series format. Even Arrow borrowed from crime drama procedurals in its pacing, resulting in a show whose tone owed as much to NCIS and CSI as the Superman and Spider-Man movies.
However, iZombie was unique in its ability to reinvent both the crime drama format and the zombie story. What made ’s story so perfect for fans of both seemingly unrelated genres was the seamless integration of horror tropes into what was otherwise an atypically grisly crime procedural. Liv was nothing like most zombies, but she occasionally reminded viewers that she was among the walking dead, while iZombie provided all the fun of a classic crime procedural while feeling entirely fresh and different thanks to its premise.
iZombie is not currently streaming but is available to rent online.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
