Felicity Reviews A TV Zombie Contender With The Walking Dead

The Walking Dead, Series 1

Television has being attempting to rival the silver screen for the last several years, and The Walking Dead is a top contender.

With budget clearly not being a hindrance in American TV, this show has gone all out to re-create the Zombie movie. So many Zombie flicks have to cram in some half-baked nonsense about ‘why?’ or ‘how?’ these frightening events have come to be, but TWD keeps the mystery going, allowing only fractions of information to leak out when necessary.

The cast is good, but some of the character stories could do with either being juicier or not there at all. “Merl” is the gun-nut who makes a brief appearance in the first couple of episodes, and is able to alienate the rest of the cast, resulting in him being tethered to a plumbing system at the top of a Zombie-infested building. When Merl’s equally unsettling sibling insists they go back to rescue him, they arrive on the roof with signs of Merl’s escape but no madman in sight. This is a clever story twist as you know that no matter where the main cast is, the non-Zombie evil redneck is out for revenge- and he can operate a shotgun!

Instead of having an NYC or Hollywood backdrop, TWD is set in the southern American state of Georgia- that’s right somewhere we probably haven’t been or heard of. This new scenery makes it seem even more realistic (just like 28 Days Later when your man was strutting the streets of London in his hospital robe) we are subsequently much more engrossed in the characters and their fight for survival.

Since the days of Dawn of the Dead Zombies have increased in athletic ability and can now outrun even the most adrenaline fuelled victims; TWD Zombies have a believable(ish) pace, and are more like a pack of hunters than a swarm of moaning, drivelling, bumbling oafs with bad make-up.

The first series ended with a massive cliff-hanger, not the kind of one where we roll our eyes and hope to god the sequel goes straight to DVD. No, this is a desperate yearning for series two to grace our screens as fast as you can say… “You all stay here, I’m gonna go and see what’s out there”.

Catch it on FX or 5