Both take the undead entirely seriously as a practical problem and play the comedy from the domestic admin around it: what to tell the neighbours, whose turn it is to deal with the body, and whether the relationship survives. Shaun of the Dead established that the joke works best when the gore is not softened, and Santa Clarita Diet keeps that rule: the violence is explicit and the register stays deadpan suburban. The variation is point of view. Shaun is about people avoiding the infected; the series is about a family whose mother is one, and who decide to manage it. Filing as LOW as it is a discussed influenced but not aknowledged by the creator of the series.