A doctor searches for her son in a demilitarized Manhattan after she lost him in the chaotic evacuation from Manhattan during the Second American Civil War.

An HBO series predicated on an America torn apart by a new Civil War is certainly timely, and having scripted my own UK Civil War radio drama a few years ago, I set about it with high hopes.

Sadly, Roberto Patino’s DMZ isn’t just disappointing, it’s a complete mess. Where to start? Well, not at the start point Episode 1 chooses, which promises to drop us head first into the action, with our central protagonist Dr Alma Ortega (Rosario Dawson) being thoroughly fumigated by mysterious figures in HAZMAT suits. Ok! There’s some kind of pandemic going on.

No, hang on… it’s a refugee reception centre. There’s been a civil war; the whys and wherefores of which never explained, despite a lengthy info-dump with a traumatised survivor of something or other Terribly Bad. Ah right, that’s quite interesting. But no sooner have we got our heads around that, than Alma’s off to the DMZ on Manhattan Island to search for her missing son. There’s some kind of time limit to this secret expedition, but such are the reams of yet more info-dump dialogue, this reviewer zoned out and I couldn’t begin to tell you why, as I started to lose the plot, along with the plot losing itself.

Next up, Alma’s wandering around some truly dreadful CGI of a devastated Manhattan, with her new buddy (never quite worked out who she was) reeling off another dollop of info-dump back story, mainly about Kill Zones and Hot Zones (which are different, how?).

Cue a new strand about some gang turf war thingamy-jig with a whole set of characters who have a fight about something in a warehouse and do a lot of shouting. Then, some feral kids randomly find a golden gun in a derelict house. Cut to: a mysterious graffiti artist in a hoodie, followed swiftly by Alma checking out her old buddy from before the war, who seems to be running some kind of dodgy Chinese Restaurant, or bordello, or gangster’s lair (wasn’t quite sure which, as I’d lost the will to live during the next twenty pages of back story).

Anyway, the Chinese Restaurant Guy gives Alma a lift to her old apartment where she has some stomach-churningly sentimental memories of life with her son before the war. And then more stuff happens, and even more new characters turn up, and talk about yet new plot lines that appear to be pinging off in all directions. Finally, it ends, of course, but not before some soldiers (who? Why?) prove that shooting fish in a barrel is actual very hard indeed, making the Stormtroopers from the Star Wars universe look like championship marksmen by comparison. Phew.

As far as manic, top-heavy world-building goes, this episode has definitely been bingeing on the blue sweets, and the hyper-active timbre is only exacerbated by a restless soundtrack of seemingly disconnected music cues. This is an object lesson in the skill of an experienced music supervisor – entirely absent here – sounding more as if the editor left their iTunes on shuffle and hoped for the best. While some of the apocalyptic set dressing is quite nice, it can’t make up for the over painted CGI, nor the jittery camerawork and strangely discombobulated editing. Perhaps they were trying to create visual excitement in place of any coherent scripted narrative.

Verdict: I suppose DMZ might settle down a bit in later episodes, but I won’t be hanging around to find out. This series opener left me feeling bloated by an all-you-can-eat buffet of dystopian clichés, and as with most all-you-can-eat buffets, not satisfied in any way. 4/10

Martin Jameson