By SHARMILA NAIR

alltherage@thestar.com.my

It is safe to say that the world has enough TV shows made about vampires, werewolves and the undead. From True Blood to The Vampire Diaries to Walking Dead, we have seen enough “creatures” with rotting flesh walking around, men prancing about half-naked and girls falling in love with vampires, to last us a lifetime.

So when MTV premiered Death Valley last month, people were skeptical over the new TV programme which features all the said creepy creatures and more.
But guess what? Death Valley is nothing like the other shows.
It is fun, entertaining, hilarious (at times) and more importantly, it doesn’t take itself way too seriously.

Death Valley is an original series by MTV and it is a dark comedy that revolves around the lives of the bumbling men and women behind the newly-formed Undead Task Force (UTF).

The elite division of the Los Angeles police department is assigned to round up the monsters in the Death Valley – where vampires, werewolves and zombies had mysteriously descended upon a year earlier.

The streets of California’s San Fernando Valley is safe no more and it is up to the UTF to restore peace and give the innocent people a sense of normalcy again.

The team is led by Captain Dashell (Bryan Callen) who is simply awkward around women and unfortunately says the worst things at any given moment. The team also has its own Casanova in the form of Billy Pierce (Bryce Johnson), a religious nice guy named Joe Stubeck (Charlie Sanders), a sexy Latina called Carla Rinaldi (Tanya Raymonde), the fast talking African-American John ‘John John’ Johnson (Texas Battle) and newbie Kirsten Landry (Caitly Lotz).

To capture these officers during their heroic moments is a camera crew that joins them on their often terrifying but hilarious adventures in the Death Valley.
The premise may not be original but the these characters make do with whatever acting scope that their roles give them and the result is hilarious at times.

You can’t help but enjoy the interaction between the characters and how they squeal and scream like a bunch of schoolgirls when a zombie attacks.

Or how they don’t feel queasy about eating a packet of cookies as their comrades shoot the zombies’ brains out. It is gruesome and sometimes downright disgusting but you know that they’re doing it to just get a laugh out of everyone – and most of the time, they do.

The cast members are awkward on screen but it is unclear whether they are simply bad actors or if they are in truth some really awesome actors who play bumbling cops on camera to perfection.

The “mockumentary” style really works for Death Valley as they chase after zombies and say politically incorrect things along the way.

Each episode is 30 minutes long and is full of pop culture references which we can all identify with. Look out for the Horatio Caine of CSI: Miami moments (with the whole one-liner and sunglasses thing) – some of them are dead on.

Death Valley currently airs on MTV (Astro Ch 713), every Sunday at 11pm.