iZombie: Killer Queen

”Jenkins, find me all the Chers."

It's the pen-penultimate episode of iZombie, ever, and by Jove this is bloody good. So much happens, it all drives along the arc splendidly, the characters are a joy- yet this week's murder mystery, this time centring around drag queens, is as splendid as ever, and drag queen brain Liv is naturally enormous fun; the episode finds time for this even though it has so much to do. I'll miss this programme.

But we begin with Liv and Ravi finding out what Martin is up to, a massive blow for her; at this point, it seems as though Liv's dad is going to be the Big Bad. But Ravi now has some original boat party Utopium, a possible source for a cure- and news of the recent murder of a cured zombie proves a cure is out there. We get a splendid little comic sub-plot, too, as Ravi and Major, that great double act, get to be heroes and rescue all Blaine’s Freylich kids. I suspect this will be the last fun sub-plot before the finale so possibly, gulp, ever.

But things soon get intense as Martin’s conspiracy leads to four “sisters” Liv helps out of Seattle turn out to be sleeper agents setting up shop in a Nevada brothel to infect people- and Enzo shows more hardline tendencies. So much so, in fact, that he exposes the operation by killing a hostage and allows Liv to learn the truth. This all feels real and character-led, complex though the plot is, a sign of good writing. The same can be said for the desperate Skype call between Liv and her dad- ultimately leading leading to Enzo shooting him dead. Yes; he’s the Big Bad. And he has the most outrageous French accent since Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

And that’s not all- Blaine finds out Don E is still running brains for Major and, even worse for him, Darcy suddenly dies in her wedding dress shortly before the wedding. Ouch. That was a superb bit of telly.

iZombie: Night and the Zombie City

"This is so noir!"

This episode is exactly as per the quote- Liv is on Sam Spade brain, the whole thing is shot and lit like a film noir, and fourth wall-breaking is apace anywhere you care to look. Ravi.in particular, knows exactly what genre he's in.

And yet, at heart, this episode shows perfectly just how much iZombie has perfected its formula just as it's about to end. Again we have an episode with a solid murder mystery plus related genre; great characterisation; and of course the ever-present arc plot. Here we have Liv learning her father is Beanpole Bob, inventor of Utopium, and thus creator of all zombies. Peyton comes to terms with no longer being mayor and returns to drinking magnificently. And, gloriously, Hi Zombie does actually seem to (just) prevent Seattle from getting nuked, meaning she didn't sacrifice her job for nothing.

We also, sweetly, have Don E proposing to Darcy (she's going to die soon, right?) - and learn that a zombie cure exists, which Liv and Clive just miss out on. We end with Liv and Ravi searching Martin's house, finding drug labs, notes possibly on the tainted Utopium- and cages full of Max Ragered Romeros. I genuinely have no idea where this is going in the last three episodes ever(!) but I'm loving iZombie more than ever.

iZombie: The Fresh Princess

"It's like calling a pine cone 'your majesty'..."

This season, now we’re just a few episodes from the end, is slowly coalescing into the best ever. It’s successfully using the non-diagetic but very present fact that this is the final season to suggest that Seattle society, with its fragile truce between humans and zombies, is on the edge of collapse. But that’s in the background; meanwhile it’s developing all the characters superbly while juggling lots of different arc strands including lots of surprises (although it’s pretty much been obvious for ages that Liv’s dad was Beanpole Bob), and still managing to function as the whodunit its always been.

Liv on ‘90s beauty queen brain is hilarious, although somewhat alienating for me. The ‘90s were my decade, the time of my adolescence. But I’m afraid the pop culture references we see here don’t reflect my personal ‘90s of Grunge, wondering why everyone thought Oasis were so great, Ren and Stimpy, waiting for the Major government to fall and naively assuring I’d never see a worse one, loads of rock festivals, beer, cigarettes (and, er, smoking other things), trying to talk to girls, and Doctor Who novels the New Adventures which I generally read to a soundtrack of Sonic Youth or the Butthole Surfers.

So I’m afraid all the ‘90s stuff passed me by, but Liv as thick beauty queen is still funny, and the murder mystery is fun. So is Peyton and Ravi's double act as they track down Beanpole Bob, and the revelation that Peyyon's selling the Space Needle has caught up with her and she's been sacked.

But the fact that Durkins has some kidnapped zombies who she's starved into becoming Romeros, and has them massacring people on telly is probably not something that bodes well. Worse, one of the Romeros is our nuke-happy general's daughter, and Major has to shoot her...

iZombie is one of the best things on telly and I can't believe it's ending.

iZombie: Death of a Car Salesman

”Herbie wasn’t evil. He was the Love Bug.”

I can’t believe how close we are to the end; previous seasons have drifted off the format a bit but this episode gives us a wanker of a murdered car salesman with both Liv and Ravi having some of his brain, and it’s all perfect. The fact that we’ve known these characters for so long just adds to it- Clive’s reaction to the two of them is hilarious but would not have been possible seasons ago.

We also have flashbacks with Martin, Liv’s dad, with Blaine, Don E and Scott E (remember him?) and seem to see that Martin is not only “Beanpole Bob” but was the original creator of that tainted utopium that causes the original zombie outbreak on that boat. Meanwhile, in the present, Liv tries to connect with her dad but is exasperated with her co tinging addiction. At the end, though, it’s clear that he fully realised that his daughter is Renegade...

Blaine, meanwhile, has a new business kidnapping teenage kids with Freylich’s Syndrome, walking zombie cures. I prefer Blaine as gangster to Blaine the tycoon; he’s in his element. And one result is the comedy pairing of, er, Don E and the teenage Darcy, who kiss. Urgh. Isn’t she about seventeen?

Still, four episodes to go. And iZombie has never been better.

iZombie: Filleted to Rest

"She fired people for existing wrong."

Another superb episode that, as this season is continuously doing with admirable skill, manages to pull off a genuinely impressive whodunit while still having lots of jaw-dropping arc stuff happen against a steadily deteriorating background of human vs zombie tension. And we end with quite the cliffhanger. Halfway through this final season...

The murder/brain of the week, a delightfully rude chef, is a particularly good one, and Liv on chef brain is a real treat. The murder of the week, to be fair, takes up a lot of screen time, and deserves to. It's too easy to forget that iZombie's basic format, still fundamentally there in spite of everything, is a bloody good one. Burgling as a murder alibi is a bloody good one.

And yet...a load of Fillmore Graves troops are killed in a terrorist attack, and after a far bit of intrigue Major gains proof that Justin- who is, let us not forget, a former boyfriend of Liv- is a traitor, shooting his recently former close friend while trying to escape. Ouch. Liv has a massive row with her mum, who we haven't seen for, well, seasons, but it's finally time to start tying up the loose ends.

There's a heartwarming scene where Michelle tells Clive that, no, he probably isn't the father... but she thinks he's a decent man and kind of wishes he was. Aw. Ravi's relationship with Dr Charlie Collier (and her twin sister!) develops a little, which makes me think they are going to share a more blatant sub-plot about a zombie cure.

But that cliffhanger, that this new player who is de-thawing zombies and appears to be Durkins' zombie mirror image is probably Liv's dad... wow.

iZombie: Dot Zom

“The future will be obnoxious..."

Another clever episode, at its heart another whodunit of the week, but one through which the arc and its themes are rather interestingly explored- and where a new player unexpectedly emerges. This season so far is going splendidly.

The brain of the week is that of a Steve Jobs/ Mark Zuckerberg/ Elon Musk type dot com "genius", at once deeply fashionable and, while professing noble aims and sinking loads of money into a "bunker" to save a selected few from a vaguely upcoming armageddon, morally blink and unwittingly fomenting genocide. Rose McIver is, of course, superb as ever, but the moral is very much that such people are pretentious wankers.

There's a nice switch at the end; the zombie-hating racist is not, in fact the killer, but the spurned zombie ex-lover. Yet it is the red herring who is unmistakably the most evil, wishing to exterminate all zombies. And Liv's wider aims are thus not in sync with her sleuthing, a nicely made point.

Meanwhile, after a few hiccups, Peyton's and Ravi's sitcom is making progress, and Blaine (where has he been?) seems to have success in pulling a journalist, Al, who is interviewing him in a subplot which serves to illustrate the ongoing danger of the Dead Enders, who are gradually doxxing zombies to a world which hats and fears them. And there's an odd new baddie, in league with French Bloke, who has nebulous aims- and a mole in the camp of "Renegade". A surprising amount of arc stuff is being set up here. And, while yet again we have a top notch episode, it's all very ominous.