Channel 4 commissions Ben Wheatley’s hilarious & unsettling satire Generation Z

A brand new 6-part series written and directed by Ben Wheatley, Generation Z sees rapacious baby boomers and disaffected teenagers at each other's throats…this time quite literally.

First they ate your dreams of a brighter future, now they want to eat you…

In Generation Z, Ben Wheatley brings his trademark pitch-black humour and biting satire to Channel 4. Produced by The Forge, this 6 X 60' comedy drama is a timely, startling and thrillingly outrageous ride through a green and pleasant land rent by division, disappointment and…death.

The future looks bleak for today's youth – seemingly-endless austerity, astronomical house prices, insurmountable student debt, a political system which appears intent on destroying itself… And to add insult to injury, their hard-earned taxes are being eaten up by the old - smug, self-satisfied, small-minded, "Little Englander" pensioners whose remaining sole purpose in life is to make it a misery for everyone else.

In a small British town, tensions come to a head when a mysterious military convoy crashes outside the Sunnywise Retirement Home. The vehicles were carrying a toxic substance, which, as a result of the crash, leaks into the local environment and infects the residents of the retirement community. The symptoms of this infection quickly manifest – an overwhelming appetite for raw flesh. They're old, they're angry and they're on the rampage. As the military scrambles to control the outbreak and keep everything out of the media spotlight, a group of regular teenagers find themselves in the thick of the battle against these flesh-eating baby boomers.

Generation Z follows a group of wide-eyed teenagers caught up in a future far more grotesque and terrifying than anything they could have expected. They wanted to make a difference, this is their chance! But it's going to take more than a pithy meme on social media…this is a bloody and messy battle royale!

Tapping directly into the myriad fears which define the experience of today's youth and bringing viscerally to life the increasingly stark divisions between generations, Ben Wheatley's Generation Z is a compelling, macabre, timely, outrageous, and scabrous satire presenting a modern Britain at war with itself.

Ben Wheatley says: "I'm excited to be working with Channel 4 and The Forge. Generation Z is my first original created tv project and I couldn't think of better partners."