‘Santa Clarita Diet’: Eating People Is Wrong

In Netflix’s new 10-episode comedy Santa Clarita Diet, Drew Barrymore is Sheila, a happily married California realtor who, in the premiere, becomes a flesh-eating undead person. Her husband, Joel, played by Timothy Olyphant, is startled but supportive: Pretty soon, they’re hunting down people worthy of death to slake Sheila’s appetite for fresh human meat.

That’s the premise of this sitcom created by Victor Fresco, a man whose previous shows, such as Better Off Ted and Andy Richter Controls the Universe, I’ve liked very much. This one? I’d say it was an acquired taste, but that’s a joke that’s all too likely to pop up at some point in Santa Clarita Diet.

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The show wants to satirize the bland vapidity of suburbia — but what sitcom doesn’t? Turning Barrymore into a cheerful monster is an almost-novel way of doing it, but the show is really just a mashup of two genres: zombies plus anti-suburban critique. Barrymore approaches her role with prodigious energy: Once she gets past the shock of what she’s become, Sheila finds consuming all that protein invigorating. She can get by with only two hours of sleep, so her productivity soars; sex with Joel is now “incredible”; and she’s found that her ability to parallel-park has improved substantially.

Fresco and his writers are capable of extending what is essentially a Saturday Night Live sketch idea over quite a few episodes, but you really have to be into the concept to get into the show’s comic rhythms. You also have to think the spectacle of Barrymore chowing down on a blood-dripping severed arm is a hilarious sight-gag. Sorry, I just didn’t.

I like the fact that the show has given the couple an interesting teen daughter, played by a charming Liv Hewson, whom the parents genuinely enjoy. And funny people like Patton Oswalt, Thomas Lennon, and Nathan Fillion pop up here and there. But “the murdering and the eating thing,” as Joel puts it at one point, becomes repetitive, as do punch lines like, “Do I have skin on my teeth?” But maybe you’ll find this carefully crafted wackiness more amusing than I did. After the undeservedly canceled Better Off Ted and the uneven but worthy, short-lived Sean Hayes sitcom Sean Saves the World, I’d love for Victor Fresco to have a hit.

Santa Clarita Diet is streaming now on Netflix.