In good taste
Dood Spoor (Dead End) creator, writer and director Malin-Sarah Gozin helps DQ digest this unique Flemish crime series, in which a man with a unique gift – he can see the last moments of anything he puts in his mouth – joins the police hunt for a serial killer.
As the creator of Flemish series such as Tabula Rasa and Clan, screenwriter Malin-Sarah Gozin has become associated with a unique brand of idiosyncratic, eccentric series.
Tabula Rasa tells the story of a woman with amnesia who must reconstruct her memories to clear her name in a missing person’s case, while Clan follows a group of sisters who vow to kill off the despicable brother-in-law they have nicknamed De Kloot (The Prick).
If the latter sounds familiar, it’s because Sharon Horgan adapted Clan for Apple TV+ under the title Bad Sisters. Gozin was an executive producer on the adaptation, taking part in the season one writers room in London and then online when Covid-19 forced everyone to stay at home, and being very “hands on” as the show progressed through development and production.
By this point, she had already done some work on another uniquely original project called Dood Spoor (Dead End), which had been put on hold in favour of partnering with star Veerle Baetens on Tabula Rasa.
Then when Bad Sisters S2 was ordered, instead of continuing on the show, Gozin decided to move her focus back to Dead End with the help of two producers she met on the Apple series, Brett Baer and Dave Finkel, and develop the show with them as an English-language project.
Since her shows often have the potential to be remade overseas – Clan is a case in point – Gozin thought it would be a good idea to develop Dead End as an international series first. Then when that work was completed, she went ahead with writing a Flemish version, which won a commission from local platforms Streamz and Play4.
“I always feel like most of the shows I create have something very universal because they tackle the human condition,” Gozin tells DQ. “It feels very relatable, whether you live in Belgium, the US or China. It’s a very human thing. The themes are universal.”
A blend of crime, comedy, drama and psychology, Dead End introduces Ed, a man with a unique skill: he can ‘see’ the last moments of anything he puts in his mouth by tasting or eating it, such as the animal being slaughtered as he takes a bite of his lamb chop birthday dinner.
Both gift and burden, he uses this quality to run a business, The Aftertaste, a service offering grief-stricken people an insight into the final moments of their dead loved ones. But when his next client is a homicide detective struggling to solve a series of mysterious killings, Ed faces a moral dilemma: if his gift works on a toothbrush or a sausage, would it work on a body too? But the more Ed becomes involved in the case, the more he and his marriage are devoured by his existential crisis.
Caviar and Lompvis produce the series, which recently celebrated its international premiere in competition at Canneseries. Federation Studios is handling distribution.
“I love to create bizarre, unique universes, where you have absurd ideas or premises and then dig into them, trying to look for what feels relatable, what feels common, where I can really uncover something about the human condition,” Gozin says. “With Clan, it really tackled toxic masculinity at a time when nobody talked about it.”
For Dead End, she wanted to take different perspectives on the concept of finality. “There’s expiration of life, so Dead End definitely deals with that because of [Ed’s] job as a grief counsellor, and his creative way to approach it by mapping out the final hours and using his special gift. There’s also a crime storyline with the murders and the serial killer,” she says.
“But I also looked at expiration from a more psychological or relationship aspect, like is there an expiration date on marriage? It’s also very much a character study, [looking at] how his eating disorder and what he does affects his marriage. Because he’s in a midlife crisis, he’s stuck in so many ways. His wife gives him some ultimatums and they have this really interesting character evolution.”
There’s also an ecological aspect to the series, with Gozin pondering the expiration of planet Earth and the fact she has become more attuned to what she eats, where it has come from and its potential impact on climate change and animal welfare.
“I felt a kind of responsibility to what I put in my mouth and, in that way, Ed’s vision and his eating disorder is a kind of a metaphor. When he puts something in his mouth, his eyes open wide [as viewers see his visions], and it’s what we should do. We shouldn’t close our eyes on stuff like that, but really consider the impact on our planet. Are we the serial killer of our own planet?
“Maybe the reason I connected it with food is because before I was doing fiction, I was in nonfiction doing culinary travel shows. I love to cook, and everything in Dead End is inspired by food. I personalised them [the characters] by what they eat. For instance, the detective is stuck in this child diet phase, so they all have their special thing and there is a lot of detailed attention towards food.”
Having imagined a man with Ed’s gift, Gozin then did what any screenwriter would do – put him in the worst possible situation by turning him into the most unusual of police consultants. This leads him in early episodes to ‘taste’ a little finger, and then a big toe. “Then it really goes off,” Gozin says. “You don’t want to know where it ends.”
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There’s no doubt the series walks a fine line between comedy and gross-out humour, as audiences are left imagining what Ed might do when faced with a corpse and a case to solve. But because of Gozin’s personal passion for food, she always wanted to keep the show “tasteful” and not just full of blood and gore.
“It’s not a show about a cannibal. It’s more about the psychological impact of what he does on his character, which is why I opted for a slower pace,” she says. “It is a crime show as well, but if you really want to feel grounded with Ed, you really have to know him because it’s a big step he has to take.
“When he’s just licking a toe and then, in episode three, eating a tiny piece of human meat, you don’t shy away from him. You’re not alienated as a viewer, because you feel for him, like, ‘You idiot, what the fuck are you doing?’ But at the same time, you understand why he’s doing it, because he constantly wants to do good and help people.”
The serialised nature of the storytelling befits that slower pace, allowing viewers to become more acquainted with Ed instead of seeing him dive straight into his police work in a case-of-the-week format that “doesn’t leave a lot of room for character development and emotional depth,” Gozin says.
“That was the challenge. You know where you want to go with the character but you know it’s not an easy journey, especially if you really want to sympathise with him. So you have to dig into his psyche. The reason the show is called Dead End is because he’s at a dead end in his marriage, in his personal life. He is stuck in this midlife crisis, just as the detective is stuck with the crime, so that’s why he asks for Ed’s help.”
Dead End marks Gozin’s first foray into directing, which proved to be a natural step for a creative who writes in a very visual way and had previously worked closely with directors on her shows to develop visual concepts. Here, she partnered with Hans Vercauter – and the experience has given her a taste for more.
“We were both on set together, which was great because some of the scenes were pretty complicated. Because we’re so aligned and in sync on what the show should be visually and in terms of the concept, it was a great way to work from a production point of view,” she says.
Part of that vision relates to the show’s use of colour, such as Ed wearing a lot of blue at the start of the series before shifting to reds – a symbol for bloody meat. “I’m a big fan of MasterChef, so it had to look tasteful, with a lot of micro shots and close-ups, which helped us with Ed’s visions and showing what he sees,” Gozin says.
Joking that lead actor Peter Van den Begin now can’t go into a restaurant in Belgium without being asked,“Any more toe?”, Gozin pays tribute to the star, with whom she previously worked on Tabula Rasa. “Putting the show together, I immediately thought about him, so we went for dinner. I told him about Ed and Dead End, and he was fascinated straight away. So that was cool because it gave me an opportunity to really write a show with him in mind,” she says.
But the project might never have come together had the show’s commissioners not taken a risk on it, at a time when money in the television industry is scarce and shows with a familiar concept or proven audience are more likely to get a green light.
“Everyone is playing safe, but once in a while, you need a bit of guts and vision as commissioners, because then you’re doing the new thing that hits off, and then there are people wanting more of that,” Gozin says. “We were lucky with Play4 and Streamz that they did have the guts and the balls and the vision to jump in. I do understand that’s what commissioners have to do right now, but they shouldn’t forget there’s also an audience that maybe wants a bit more, that wants to be surprised, that wants see something different.”
Should there be an appetite for more, Gozin already has ideas for a second season of Dead Meat. Until then, she’s happy creating bizarre new worlds with more interesting characters, while also hoping to get the chance to take Dead End out internationally. “When we do,” she adds, “the English scripts are ready.”
Like that? Watch this! Suggested by AI, selected by DQ
Red Light: A Dutch/Belgian crime drama about three women from different backgrounds whose lives become entangled through a case of human trafficking, prostitution and a missing husband.
De Twaalf (The Twelve): This character drama takes viewers inside the jury room as 12 strangers come together to decide the fate of a woman on trial for murder, while their own lives become affected by what they hear in court.
Grenslanders (Floodlands): A Dutch police inspector and a Belgian psychologist come together to investigate the discovery of a small boat, covered with bullet holes and blood, on some mudflats between Belgium and the Netherlands – with a young girl found wandering nearby.
tagged in: Caviar, Dead End, Dood Spoor, Federation Studios, Lompvis, Malin-Sarah Gozin, Play4, Streamz