‘Walking Dead’ Brings New Life to AMC

It needs to be said: zombies aren’t sexy. Vampires may have hit their highest peak in popularity since “Nosferatu,” but they are an anomaly within the classic monster canon. Drinking blood? Hot. Chewing on entrails? Less so. Sookie wouldn’t find Bill nearly so alluring if his epidermis was liable to sluff off mid-makeout. Fortunately, “The Walking Dead” goes for the brains, like any good zombie would.

When the first episode of “The Walking Dead” aired on—surprise, surprise—Halloween, it became AMC’s highest rated premiere to date. The series is a bold choice for the network, improbably broadening their output from the decidedly highbrow “Mad Men” and “Breaking Bad” to include a traditionally B-movie subject: the moaning, rotting, flesh-hungry undead. And, perhaps even more improbably, the series deserves every word of the tremendous acclaim it’s received so far.

The zombie zeitgeist, in addition to being painfully alliterative, is not to be overlooked. The last decade has seen the release of—among many other zombie movies—“Shaun of the Dead,” “28 Days Later,” “28 Weeks Later,” a remake of “Dawn of the Dead,” and, in print, “The Zombie Survival Guide.” (Full disclosure: I dressed up as Shaun for Halloween 2005. Exactly one person correctly identified my costume.) The post-apocalyptic zombie narrative fits like a comfortable—if bloodstained—pair of shoes. For the most part, the viewer has a good idea of what to expect, which is both convenient and frustrating for a newcomer to the genre. “Shaun” may have pioneered the rom-zom-com, but “The Walking Dead” is a compelling step back to zom-dram.

The pilot enlists the scripting and direction of Frank Darabont, known for his Oscar-nominated film adaptations of Stephen King’s “The Shawshank Redemption,” “The Green Mile,” and “The Mist,” and the migratory survivors of “The Walking Dead” recall “The Stand,” another King classic, as well as a bleak, Bill Murray-free “Zombieland.”

Yet, despite echoes of conventional zombie tropes—protagonist Rick Grimes even awakens in a hospital, similar to a sequence in “28 Days Later”—“The Walking Dead” never feels stale. Grimes’ return to his deserted home is fresh and excruciating. The first episode of “The Walking Dead” manages never to err on the side of camp nor melodrama, distinguishing itself in excellent details: the joy of the first hot shower in too long; the difficulties of parenting under end-of-the-world circumstances; the sheer scale of the zombie population.

But neither does the series stray uncomfortably far from its predecessors. Director George Romero, the so-called Grandfather of the Zombie, defined our post-voodoo conception of the monster with 1968’s “Night of the Living Dead.” Romero famously (and indignantly) denounced the speedy zombies depicted in the remake of his “Dawn of the Dead,” on the grounds that—of course?—zombies can’t run. While the titular walking dead don’t violate any such sacred tenets, they’re refreshingly lither than the stiff-armed, Frankensteinian zombies of yore.

Until now, zombies had yet to serve as the subject of a mainstream American TV show. A 2008 UK miniseries, “Dead Set,” was critically acclaimed for its portrayal of a zombie outbreak. But a five-episode run isn’t much. I am, however, confident in the relative staying power of “The Walking Dead.” Based on an award-winning comic series that has accumulated more than 70 issues since its 2003 debut, the series has plenty to work with.

Writing the show, however, will have its own challenges. Zombies are necessarily a void of personality, so for a television program about them to sustain itself, the human characters had better be compelling. Sheriff’s deputy Rick Grimes, played by British actor Andrew Lincoln, cuts a more imposing figure than Simon Pegg’s geeky Shaun. But Grimes is no Superman. His flaws are what make him interesting to watch. “True Blood” intuitively crossbreeds the vampire myth with the bodice-ripper novel, but as The Atlantic’s Alyssa Rosenberg suggests, “The Walking Dead” has much more in common with a Western—Rick Grimes even gallops into Atlanta on a horse.

The AMC viewer advisory that appeared before the episode nebulously warned of its “intense” content. While it certainly is graphic, the brilliance is that it is simultaneously intensely cerebral. Indeed, the part of the show I’m most excited to see develop are the beginnings of a theme explored beautifully in Romero’s films: humans can be more frightening than any monster.

—Columnist Molly O. Fitzpatrick can be reached at fitzpat@fas.harvard.edu.