Having successfully outlived its American doppelgängers, the original TV version of The Returned is set to resume creeping out France at the end of this month. And as announced via press release this morning, it won’t be long before the previously dead start unsettling viewers across the Atlantic: Season two of The Returned will debut October 31 on SundanceTV at 10 p.m., because mysterious skin lesions and loss of appetite can’t get in the way of seasonally appropriate timing. (Though that does cause a bit of a scheduling conflict for viewers who were looking forward to staying home on Halloween and hailing the king, baby.)
A quick briefing for readers who didn’t watch season one of The Returned on Sundance, haven’t caught up with it on Netflix (where the joke about multiple projects called The Returned will never die), or refuse to read The A.V. Club’s reviews of the first eight episodes (which, c’mon guys—we worked really hard on those): The Returned takes place in a small French mountain village whose citizens discover their deceased loved ones are returning to life, seemingly un-aged, decay-free, and completely sleepless. The second season of the show begins six months after a tense stand-off between the living and the returned, with those who remain in the show’s unnamed setting either keeping their mouths shut about what they’ve seen or facing skepticism from authorities. But when a mysterious man comes to town, a series that’s been really good about keeping its secrets might just start digging at the truth.
In news of other exciting returns, Scottish post-rock act Mogwai will also be back to score the second season, reprising its role as TV’s spookiest soundtrack artists this side of Angelo Badalamenti.