Dead Set is a British satirical zombie horror television miniseries written and created by Charlie Brooker.

The five episodes, aired over five consecutive nights, chronicle a zombie outbreak that strands the housemates and production staff inside the Big Brother House, which quickly becomes a shelter from the undead.

During an eviction night on Big Brother, riots occur in several cities across the UK, with emergency services struggling to cope and the military being called in, and the live show may be bumped for related news.

Producer Patrick tries to maintain control, issuing orders to the runners and his assistant Claire, while former seasons' housemates Aisleyne, Imogen, Helen, Bubble, Brian, Kinga, Eugene, Makosi and Ziggy are having a reunion party in the studio green room and presenter Davina McCall prepares for the post-eviction interview.

Meanwhile, Patrick hides in a toilet cubicle after sacrificing Claire and a disabled man to save himself; then, he finds Pippa in the Big Brother green room while trying to escape from zombie Davina.

In the morning, the housemates are bickering, oblivious to the situation and wondering why Big Brother seems to ignore them, with only Space realising that something is wrong.

She gets the keys but is forced back inside the closed studio, where she escapes from a zombie cameraman lurking in the camera runs by entering the house via the Diary Room's fire exit door.

Marky opens a door to taunt her, and the cameraman bursts into the house, biting Angel before Kelly smashes his head with a fire extinguisher.

While Riq struggles to fix the car, Alex yells at him, angrily revealing that she had to shoot her zombified best friend dead to survive.

Patrick and Pippa are stuck in the green room with no means of communication; they begin to argue as they try to defend themselves from zombie Davina as she prowls the corridor outside, making the occasional attempt to get in.

Kelly declares that the living will win the day because they can still reason, then fatally shoots Angel in the head with the policeman's gun.

Riq decides he must get to Kelly and convinces Alex to leave the safety of the country house with him so they can make their way to the studio by boat along the river.

Riq makes it to the studio and approaches the Big Brother house, where Marky shoots the zombies inside the compound with the policeman's assault rifle.

As a devastated Kelly tries to shoot Patrick in a rage, a traumatised Pippa runs back to the studio's offices, and Space follows.

Zombies quickly fill the camera runs, and Kelly realises they will easily make it through the two-way glass and fire doors.

Only Kelly makes it into the Diary Room; Marky and Veronica are eaten alive, and Space sees that Pippa is one of the zombies trying to get into the booth alongside her undead mother.

Kelly congratulates Space on winning the series of Big Brother, and tells him to open the outside door to the fire exit so she can fight her way to the van.

He refuses, knowing she is vastly outnumbered and will be killed until Kelly reminds him of the advice he gave her to face her fears and seize the day.

For example, he cited Maxwell Ward and Saskia Howard-Clarke as inspirations for Marky and Veronica, with Pippa and Space being loosely based on Helen Adams and Kieron "Science" Harvey respectively.

[9] For further inspiration, he attended the live eviction of George Galloway during Celebrity Big Brother 4, where he also visited the camera runs that surround the House.

[8] Angela Jain, then head of E4, announced that she had commissioned the series in April 2008,[11] although the true nature of the project was not publicly revealed until August of that year.

[13] The design of the fictional Big Brother set was made to look as authentic as possible – it featured similar cameras, two-way mirrors (which could be angled to avoid revealing the camera crew), astroturf and the actual (albeit slightly modified) Diary Room chair from Big Brother 8.

[17] Brooker cited similar constraints for eliminating his original concept for the final episode, which would have been set six months after the outbreak.

[10] A map for the Borehamwood region, the site of the real Big Brother House, was added to the Urban Dead MMORPG – with a competition to win a copy of the DVD as part of the promotion of the series.

This clip shows an unknown woman wearing a leather jacket and trousers trapped in a destroyed Diary Room, covered in blood and screaming for help.

Metacritic assigned the series a weighted average score of 77 out of 100, based on six critics, indicating "generally favourable reviews".

[18] In 2013, Brooker confirmed that the Big Brother 14 production team sought his approval (which he granted) for a "quarantine" task inspired by Dead Set, which saw housemates being subjected to a fictional viral outbreak.