Like many of us, Olivia “Liv” Moore🍨 (Ros💖e McIver) can be a real monster when she’s hungry.
Th🌠e difference is, her pick-me-up of choice is encased in people’s skulls.
“iZombie,” the new show from Rob Thomas (“Veronica Mars,” “Party Down”), gives us a new kind of heroine: Undead but still quippy, she solves crimes by dining on the brains of murder victims, whose mem🧔ories make their way into her consciousness.
This makes for a logical confluence of two of our enduring genre fascinations, zombies and crime procedurals. It’s a fun concept — aಌnd McIver an engaging actor — but the show’s early episodes aren’t as lively as they could be.
Adapted from the (which get a nod in the show’s stylish opening 🔥credits), “iZombie” begins with the still-living Liv, a type-A med student with a doting fiancé (Robert Buckley) who makes a rare exception in her work-only schedule to attend a booze cruise with a pal.
The boat’s beset by a murderous gang which butchers everyone on board,🃏 and the next thing she knows, she’s awakenin𒅌g in a body bag on the beach.
Cut to the newly zombified Liv, who’s jettisoned school and guy, dyed her hair white-blond and — still very practical-minded, even in undeath — has taken a job at a morgue alongside the affable Ravi (Rahul Kꦓohli).
Her colleague is so mellow, he takes her condition completely in stride, even helping to facilitate her brain ingestion (“Why the hot sauce? Is that aꦗ zombie thing?”), and hopes to help find a cure.
You may be asking at this point: “But … zombie apoc��alypse? Are they comi൲ng for everyone else, too?”
Four episodes in, it would appear not; Liv has only come into contact with a couple of others like her, one of whom (David Anders) seems destineﷺd to be Liv’s nemesis, using his powers for evil (or at least cash) and turning others into zombies when it suits him.
So far, so good; in♏ many ways, “iZombie” echoes its noir predecessor, “Veronica Mars,” right down to the tiny (hoodied) protagonist who frequently provides wry narration.
But the show loses some steam when Liv begins taking on the characteristics, and memories, of various victims of fo💟ul play on whom she’s dined.
Passing herself off as a psychic t꧃o local detective Clive Babineaux (Malcolm Goodwin), she becomes his gal undea🙈d-Friday, leading him to catch perps via brain-eating recall — and, occasionally, what she refers to as “full-on zombie mode,” when she’s able to fight off just about anyone.
With so much of Liv’s time s🍌pent channeli🍌ng others, we don’t yet have enough of a sense of who she really is — or why we should care.
If “iZombie” dials back on the whodunits and lets us get to know our immortal he♊roine better, they might just have a tasty hit on their hands.