Santa Clarita Diet, Netflix original

This is the unnervingly upbeat, murderous new comedy coming to Netflix. The Santa Clarita Diet follows the lives of Joel (Timothy Olyphant, Justified) and Sheila (Drew Barrymore, 50 First Date, The Wedding Singer), a husband a wife team with an unusual take on nutrition.


As all good Americans are want to do from time to time, Sheila decides to lose some weight with a diet programme, except that this one is... er... rather more cannibalistic than most. Though this dramatic change 'sends the family down the road to death and destruction', but Sheila has never felt better and has loads of energy. The bloody, guts and gore come with a serving of feminism played out in the relationship between Sheila and her teenage daughter and when sexist males run the risk of becoming supper.

At first glance, Santa Clarita Diet looks like another of those naff diet adverts that make you want to scream (complete with the ubiquitous red dress) but it's actually a starry Netflix original about a diet where, the heroine boasts, 'I satisfy all my cravings and eat whoever I want, and I only eat the foods that deserve it. This one was a real b***h.'

There's plenty of hype surrounding this premiere - much of it due to Barrymore's breakthrough to the small screen and Netflix's knack for creating cult hits. But we're a little dubious about how concept of eating human flesh can be, erm, fleshed out over a whole series.