Following Intrigues in "The Returned" Jean-Claude Lother/The Sundance Channel, via Associated Press Clotilde Hesme, left, and Brune Martin, with Pierre Perrier in the background in the surreal French series "The Returned." The word "zombie" is thrown around a lot in reference to "The Returned," the spooky French series whose first season has hit the halfway point on Sundance Channel. It's even been called the French "Walking Dead." But it's not really a zombie show. Only one character eats flesh, and he started doing it while he was still alive. When an undead girl says, "Zombies have to stick together," her smile tells you that she considers herself anything but. The returnees - there appear to be five or six of them so far, though it's not entirely clear who's dead and who's alive - reappear in a French mountain town whose forests and crags, along with its lakeside roadhouse vaguely recall "Twin Peaks." It's an appropriate vibe for a show that incorporates several murder mysteries; add droning music by Mogwai and a fondness for static tableaus and slow, dramatic pans, and you have a show that's unusually moody and deliberate, by American standards, anyway. Having died as few as four and as many as 35 years ago, in ways that are gradually revealed to us, the dead return seemingly as good as new, with no wounds, decomposition or, at first, memories of how they died. They're ghosts, but they are very much a part of the physical world, able to dispense savage violence or, this being a French television show, engage in copious, fully unclothed sex. The show is based, extremely loosely, on a 2004 film with the same French title, "Les Revenants." Taken together, the artisanal qualities of the production, its European frankness and the reserved, mostly good performances (by a cast unknown in the United States) give "The Returned" a kind of hushed tastefulness that many will equate with excellence. It's worth noting, though, that between "The Returned" and "The Walking Dead," it's the American show - with its unsparing bleakness, its modern-western narrative, its recent decision to spend two entire episodes filling in the back story of a supporting character - that is more unconventional. The French show is just another puzzle picture, predicated on the withholding of information, in which the answers to a mystery are parceled out in an intricate set of overlapping stories involving a large ensemble. One of the challenges during the early episodes is keeping track of the more than 15 significant characters and their byzantine connections, though that's also something that will appeal to the wonk in many of us. Satisfaction, in these cases (from M. Night Shyamalan, say, to this year's "Broadchurch"), depends on the artfulness of the unraveling and how interesting the answers are once they've arrived. "The Returned" has no worries on the first score. If you fall into its languorous rhythms, you'll be rewarded by a story that builds tension with clockwork precision and expertly maintains a mood of clammy dread. On the second score, the verdict isn't so clear. As the living react (with less surprise than you might expect) to the return of their loved ones - whose ranks include a silent boy, a tousle-haired musician who died on his wedding day, a serial killer and a teenage girl now four years younger than her twin sister - there are glimmers of ideas about unfinished business and the debts that people on both sides of the divide owe to one another. But by the end of the eight-episode season (a second has been ordered), these glimmers remain vague. An exchange between two of the returnees is representative of the show's glib profundity: No one can hurt us now. But can we hurt other people? They don't need us for that. There's no denying the power of atmosphere and clever plotting, however, and in Episode 5 on Thursday, the show's narrative threads start to reveal themselves more clearly. If you've been watching already, and are wondering about those arresting images of animals suspended underwater, you'll get some answers, along with a better sense of the importance of the dam that holds back the reservoir above the town. If you haven't been watching, Sundance will offer marathons of previous episodes on Sundays in December; they're also available from Amazon Instant Video. The most consistently engaging dead person we see in "The Returned" is Camille, the confused 15-year-old who knows that for some reason she's intensely jealous of her twin, now 19 years old. Played by an arresting young actress named Yara Pilartz, she delivers the closest thing to a thesis statement in the show: "Love is stronger than death? What a load of bull.