HBO Max's Disappointing Post-Apocalyptic Miniseries Was Based On An Acclaimed Comic

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Viewers were both blessed and cursed with a plethora of topical TV shows in the wake of the 2020 COVID-19 lockdowns. The series "Station Eleven," "Y: The Last Man," and "Sweet Tooth" all depicted worlds ravaged by plagues or pandemics upon their arrival in 2021, with only "Sweet Tooth" lasting beyond a single season. That's likely because, of the trio, the adventures of a cute deer-boy felt the most removed from reality. (Being on Netflix didn't hurt, either.) Meanwhile, "Station Eleven" was rightly championed by critics and was only ever meant to be a miniseries. Still, it probably hit a little too close to home to break out with the masses.

But where "Y: The Last Man" was swiftly canceled after an arduous, years-long journey to the screen, at least it didn't come and go the way another celebrated post-apocalyptic Vertigo comic book turned disappointing TV show did the year after. Developed for HBO Max by Roberto Patino and based on the comics of the same name created by Brian Wood and Riccardo Burchielli, the miniseries "DMZ" takes place in a near future where Manhattan has been turned into a demilitarized zone (i.e. a DMZ) in the wake of a second U.S. Civil War. Lack of a deadly virus aside, the show tapped into the zeitgeist when it premiered in 2022, serving up politically loaded imagery of civil unrest and primarily non-white people left to fend for themselves by uncaring governments in deteriorating urban landscapes.

Was it another case of a TV show getting too real? Perhaps, but many critics agreed that "DMZ" just wasn't very good. It had its defenders (/Film's review praised the series in its debut), and it certainly had its strengths. Yet, it suffered what was ultimately a fatal blow during its development.

Rosario Dawson stars in "DMZ" as Alma "Zee" Ortega, a medic searching the DMZ for her son several years after she was separated from him during the evacuation of Manhattan amidst the second U.S. Civil War. This is itself a change from the show's source material, which mainly followed the reporter Matty Roth (who isn't in the series at all). Zee, however, is indeed a lead in the original comics (there, she's a former medical student named Zee Hernandez), so it makes for an otherwise agreeable tweak.

Unfortunately, as Dawson informed Newsweek in 2022, the show was initially envisioned as "a multi-year several episode series" before being reworked as a four-episode miniseries due to the COVID-19 pandemic. That explains a lot, including why "DMZ" introduces several compelling characters without diving deeper into their stories. It also accounts for the show's contrivances, be it awkward dialogue that's asked to do a lot of heavy-lifting or aspects that make the series feel smaller than it should — like how Zee just happens to have intimate connections to the two guys who rule most of the DMZ, as played by Benjamin Bratt and Hoon Lee.

It's a shame, too, as "DMZ" thrives in other areas. Besides the riveting turns by reliable stars like Dawson and Bratt, the show forgoes the bland, desaturated visuals of similar modern genre fare in favor of bolder colors. Series directors Ava DuVernay ("Selma") and Ernest Dickerson ("The Wire," "The Walking Dead"), himself Spike Lee's former go-to cinematographer, are likewise in their element while handling the show's mix of personal drama, post-apocalyptic thrills, and street crime, as is Roberto Patino (drawing from his experience working on "Sons of Anarchy"). In the end, though, COVID-19 might've simply doomed this series.