The Walking Dead

The Walking Dead is a drama about a zombie apocalypse. It is based on the 2003 Image Comics series. AMC 2010-???

Review

NOW SHOWING

USA TV: AMC
UK TV: FX UK 

CONTENT

The show burst onto TV screens over Halloween in 2010. The strong pilot episode established a bleak world where civilization had found no way to combat the disease which was killing people and then turning them into walking corpses bent on biting those still living. Into this world stepped Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln), a police sheriff who was determined to track down his family and restore some hope to a hopeless world.

The show was an instant success with over five million tuning in to the premier. For a Cable show that was a massive number. Fellow AMC shows Mad Men and Breaking Bad had regular audiences of about half that at the time.

Despite that success though the show is faced with several problems as it develops. Adapting a comic book into a weekly television show was always going to be an issue because the formats are so different. The show is also set in a deeply depressing context and it remains to be seen if audiences will stick around if no hope is to be found anywhere. Finally the show is set in the South, based around Georgia in its first two seasons. Yet AMC chose to cast many actors without convincing Southern accents including leading man Andrew Lincoln who is English.

November 2011

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