The Returned

Fabrice Gobert's The Returned (French: Les Revenants) launched on Canal+ in November 2012 and won the BAFTA for Best International Programme in 2014, the first French-language drama series ever to win the prize. The series ran for two seasons across sixteen episodes total, with a substantial three-year gap between season one (2012) and season two (2015).

The series is loosely inspired by Robin Campillo's 2004 feature film Les Revenants (released in English-speaking markets as They Came Back), which had developed the central conceit of the dead returning to a small town in their original physical form. Campillo himself was not directly involved in the series; the production rights to the film were acquired by Canal+ and the showrunning was handed to Gobert with original episode-writing by a six-person room.

The cast is led by Anne Consigny, Frédéric Pierrot, Clotilde Hesme and Yara Pilartz, with Pierre Perrier, Guillaume Gouix and Céline Sallette in major supporting roles. The series was shot largely on location in Annecy in the French Alps; the lake-bordered mountain town's geography is one of the most-discussed visual elements of the production. The score is by the Scottish post-rock band Mogwai, who released the soundtrack as a stand-alone studio album in 2013. An English-language remake by A&E aired in 2015 (The Returned, with French co-production) and was cancelled after a single season; the original Canal+ version remains the canonical version internationally.