Review: AMC’s The Walking Dead, Series Premiere

bill bodkin looks at the new series…

If you have a vivid and slightly paranoid imagination, you’ve often wondered, “What would you do if there was a full-out zombie apocalypse?”

Well, imagine if you woke up from a coma and you’re in a hospital that is void of life, yet full of the undead. With no idea of where your family, friends or anyone, for that matter, is, you must try and put the pieces together and survive this hostile, dizzying and frightening reality.

It’s an episode that probably none of us would like to go through. Luckily we don’t have to. We can just watch the first episode of AMC’s The Walking Dead.

The new series is based on the comic book by Robert Kirkman and Tony Moore (who also wrote the script) and is produced, co-written and directed (at least for the pilot) by Frank Darabont, the man who brought us the dramatic masterpiece The Shawkshank Redemption.

The series revolves around Deputy Sheriff Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln from Love Actually — he’s the dude who was in love with Keira Knightley), who wakes up from a coma after being shot while in the line of duty. The wounded Grimes, still dazed and groggy from his coma, must try and deal with the sight of blood stained and bullet-riddled walls, half-eaten bodies, strange noises and hundreds upon hundreds of corpses strewn about the hospital parking lot. The only thing running through his hazy mind is: “I must find my family.”

He ends up meeting a survivor (Snatch’s Lennie James) and his son, who fill Grimes in about the zombie invasion and the ensuing chaos. Grimes then gears up for a trip to Atlanta — supposedly the only safe spot in the state of Georgia. But in the climax, Grimes finds out that Atlanta is teeming with zombies.

The show is another brilliant work from AMC’s Original Series department. Shot in brilliant 16mm film, The Walking Dead is better than your typical zombie film. While it maintains the gore factor of your classic zombie flick (pushing the envelope for cable TV violence, even if it airs at 10 p.m.), The Walking Dead has the same quality that makes AMC’s other juggernaut Mad Men so good: the human drama.

The Walking Dead packs the same emotional right cross that Don Draper and company have put forth for the past four seasons. For example, in the first episode, Lennie James’ character Morgan has an emotional breakdown as he’s trying to put his recently zombified wife out of her misery. You can’t help but feel his pain because the scene is done in a realistic, human way, not filled with over-baked melodrama that other horror movies often do.

As for the horror element, the series is probably one of the most white-knuckle intense shows ever to grace the screen. With every step our hero Grimes takes, we wonder if a zombie is around the corner. When he rides his horse into the heart of Atlanta and meets a horde of zombies, you get that “oh my God” twinge in your stomach. How many shows have ever done that?

At the conclusion of the first episode of The Walking Dead you are left wanting more. So many seeds have already been planted. Can Grimes escape the zombie-surrounded tank he’s trapped in? Who’s the voice on the radio that’s called him? If Grimes can reunite with his wife and son, what’s going to happen since his best friend and partner Shane (Jon Bernthal) has seemingly shacked up with Grimes’ wife (Sarah Wayne Callies)? What role will veteran character actor Michael Rooker (JFK, Days of Thunder) have in the series? And was that Boondock Saint Norman Reedus we saw in the trailer?

This is the brilliance of AMC original programming. We are given taught, intelligent, funny, emotional and gripping drama that leave us wanting more. They take us to places television has never been before, from the advertising world of 1960s New York to the zombie apocalypse of Atlanta. Bravo to you, AMC. I’ll see you next week for another exciting, brain-chomping, blood-and-guts episode of The Walking Dead.

All Photos Credit: AMC