Thursday 16 December 2010

The Walking Dead (FX)

America's other new hit show of last year showed very soon after the US on FX. I don't know whether any of the networks have bought it, but they would be wise to: it is very excellent.


Masterminded by Frank Darabont (writer/director of Shawshank, Green Mile and The Mist) it tells the story of a group of survivors after a zombie apocalypse. Darabont wrote and directed the first episode and heavily rewrote the rest of the series leading to two of the other writers to quit the show. As long as Darabont remains so hands on I can't see this affecting the second, slightly longer (8 episodes as opposed to this series 6), series.

The first episode, which focussing almost entirely on the (Andrew Lincoln), is particularly brilliant and compares very favourably with the best zombie movies. The rest of the series never quite hits these heights again, but is always very very good. The advantage of being a series means the survivors are far more rounded and there's already a lot of potential for future series.

While The Walking Dead doesn't bring anything completely original to the genre it does have many interesting twists on things we've seen before. If you are a fan of zombie movies then this is pretty much a must watch.

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