France, Out runs a panicked aristocrat, pursued by a masked, machete-wielding sans-culotte on a blood-spattered horse, a guillotine out-of-focus but prominent in the background.
He collapses in the snow, food-dye blue blood geysering forth from his wound. The camera zooms out and we see the aristocratic blue blood, white snow, and red blood of a nearby corpse form the familiar French flag.
It does not get more subtle from here. The first season runs eight episodes, ranging from 39 to 57 minutes long. Instead, we meet him as a kind-hearted prison doctor, a former orphan who ministers to the downtrodden and mourns his dead brother.
Together they investigate a rash of unexplained disappearances and deaths that have befallen the local poor. This, in turn, leads them to troubling discoveries about the local nobility. The other main protagonist, Elise de Montargis, does not appear to be based on a single real historical personage. Unlike most other nobles we meet, Elise is deeply troubled by brewing social unrest. Rather than sit demurely by and watch the men debate politics, she intones about equality and her willingness to give up privilege, though precisely what that privilege is is left underspecified.
These are zombies of a particular kind: while retaining their cognitive abilities no groaning mindless shufflers, these , the infected are rendered inhumanly strong, hungry for human flesh, and heedless to all injury save fatal decapitation.
