Brain-eating aliens in D.C.? Horror meets humor in CBS' 'BrainDead'

The timing couldn't be better for a TV series bringing politicians and extraterrestrials together.

Premiering Monday, June 13, CBS' serio-comic "BrainDead" does indeed invoke the names Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. Rest assured, however, it's fiction as political-family scion Laurel (played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead) finds a huge complication upon starting a job in Washington, D.C.: More and more Congressmen and others on Capitol Hill are getting "iZombie"-d by alien bugs that target their brains.

You could insert your own joke here, but creators and executive producers Robert and Michelle King largely have taken care of that.

"It's been strangely topical," Michelle says, though Robert adds "BrainDead" was sparked by "the last government shutdown, I guess, two years ago. No one seemed to be working off of strategy. Everybody seemed to be working off of emotion or some magical thinking. That the government could give up on its debt seemed like a very odd concept, so we started with the idea of how extremism grows from one person, and that moved us toward the idea of a 1950s 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers' kind of movie."

Indeed, Michelle King notes she and Robert "didn't want to do a straight-on political story." Citing such humorists as Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, Robert says the ultimate aim with "BrainDead" is to appeal to "people who aren't really drawn to political subject matter, but would be if there were a hybrid."

Winstead is no stranger to horror and suspense. Her film credits include "Final Destination 3" and the recent "10 Cloverfield Lane," plus the earlier CBS series "Wolf Lake." She says she's "comfortable" in the genre.

"I think that might be why a script like this isn't so scary to me. Some actors might say, 'Oh, gosh, this is strange. I don't know how I'm going to understand this.' For me, it was exciting to jump into something like this."

Tony Shalhoub ("Monk"), Aaron Tveit ("Grease: Live") and Danny Pino ("Law & Order: Special Victims Unit") also star in "BrainDead" with Winstead, who reasons that "we all feel a little bit overwhelmed by what's happening right now politically, in one way or another. I think the idea that people are losing their heads is something most of us can agree with, regardless of where you stand on all the issues. Everyone involved in this project, we've just been kind of shaking our heads over how strangely close to reality some of the scenes are. Though it's seemingly so absurd and over-the-top, a lot of the time, it isn't."