Netflix's Santa Clarita Diet review round-up: Zombie mum Drew Barrymore can chew on a human foot and still look adorable!

Created by: Victor Fresco
Starring: Drew Barrymore, Timothy Olyphant, Liv Hewson, Skyler Gisondo, Ricardo Chavira, Mary Elizabeth Ellis, and Richard T. Jones
Debuts: Friday, February 3 on Netflix (anytime)

Drew Barrymore and Timothy Olyphant are gearing up to appear in the Netflix's brand new comedy, Santa Clarita Diet, as a suburban Realtor couple where Drew Barrymore plays the role of a simply adorable zombie.

Yes, you heard it right. It's hilarious, though!

Drew Barrymore and Timothy Olyphant play the character of Sheila and Joel Hammond, who are into real estate business in Los Angeles. The 10-episode-series will premiere on Netflix on February 3.

Also read: Netflix's Santa Clarita Diet: Five reasons why you should not miss Drew Barrymore's zombie comedy

The synopsis of the show reads: "In Santa Clarita Diet, Joel (Timothy Olyphant) and Sheila (Drew Barrymore) are husband and wife realtors leading vaguely discontented lives in the L.A. suburb of Santa Clarita with their teenage daughter Abby (Liv Hewson), until Sheila goes through a dramatic change sending their lives down a road of death and destruction...but in a good way."

Just ahead of its premiere, we take a look at the various critics' review. Here's what they have to say:

Daniel Fienberg, The Hollywood Reporter

Directed in its first two episodes by Zombieland helmer Ruben Fleischer, the show boasts appeal that in large part comes from Barrymore's innocent glee at Sheila's new eating habits, which find her frequently bathed in blood, bedecked in intestines or gnawing at exsanguinated limbs.

The thing that enlivens these zombie-ironic relationship conversations is the fine chemistry between Barrymore and Olyphant. Barrymore is playing more to type, a horror-comedy variation on her 50 First Dates role balancing sweetness and exaggerated imperfections, having a ball with the swearing and gore as Sheila's id becomes dominant. Olyphant is in the less instantly convincing position of playing a character repeatedly described as wimpy and indecisive when his acting instincts tend toward coiled intensity.

Sonia Saraiya, Variety

[Here the critic has given a caution in the beginning of her review: Don't eat dinner while watching "Santa Clarita Diet." Don't even eat popcorn.]

"Santa Clarita Diet" is a treat for a very specific sense of humor — and a little unpleasant for everyone else. It's B-movie camp, set in the Los Angeles suburbs; in between eating people, Sheila, with her devoted husband, Joel (Timothy Olyphant), sells ranch houses with plush-carpeted rooms.

It is disconcertingly hilarious how easily devouring human body parts and cleaning up after dead bodies become part of their daily routine; with good-old-fashioned Southern California optimism, Sheila converts her cheeriness at being a cannibal into encouraging her friends to go out and live their lives to the fullest. This inspirational speech leads to two different sets of people buying Range Rovers.

Robert Lloyd, Los Angeles Times

As a story of ordinary people who inadvertently, then purposefully, become murderers, and the contrast of the exceedingly normal and the excessively strange, it bears some resemblance to "Fargo," with which it also shares a formal whimsicality. On the face of it, the premise sounds like a joke about a bad sitcom pitch — "and Mom's a zombie!" (Within the world of the series, there is already a comic book with that premise, "Mombie.")

The plotting sometimes sacrifices sense in the name of comedy and provides easy targets you won't particularly mind seeing killed and eaten, but it's tight and propulsive, and because the action takes place over a short period of time, the series never turns into "Variations on a Theme of Zombie Cannibalism." And the performances are charming; characters grow more dimensional over time in ways that can't be predicted from the initial episodes.

Erik Adams, The A.V. Club

At a nuts-and-bolts level, Santa Clarita Diet isn't entirely novel: In addition to those Ash Vs. Evil Dead and Stan Against Evil parallels, the show is essentially a sitcom hybridisation of iZombie and The Americans. The main attraction, and the thing that'll pull viewers from one episode to the next is the show's deranged energy. Olyphant's been here before, with his recurring role on The Grinder, another high-concept, gag-driven sitcom, populated by weirdos, who spoke in droll quips and one-liners. It might not be the type of thing you'll want to feast on, but Santa Clarita Diet is good for a little snack here or there.

Issy Sampson, The Guardian

It's unclear if the whole zombie thing is a metaphor – for the pressure that society puts on women to be perfect, how there's something dark happening behind every picket fence – or it's just to prove that Drew Barrymore can chew on a human foot and still look adorable. No one is expecting Mike Leigh levels of stark realism from a sitcom in which the star of Never Been Kissed eats human flesh, but the show skates over major plot points, such as how Sheila's death happened and why no one is having a nervy b over the whole zombie thing.