Ministry of Innovation / Business of Technology

Walking Dead on AMC improves on comic, revives zombie fiction… again

AMC's adaptation of Robert Kirkman's Walking Dead is a striking, high-quality …

The first episode of AMC's TV adaptation of Walking Dead is better than the comics it's adapting. I don't say that to slight Robert Kirkman's writing, just to point out that the show has the advantage of years and years of excellent comics to draw from. In the first issues of a comic, everyone, including the creators, are often in the dark about who the characters are and where they're going. The first episode of the TV show can be much more confident when it comes to characterization and pacing.

A warning: we're going to talk about the show in detail, so if you haven't seen it yet, there will be some items people may consider spoilers.

These are people, not props

Rick Grimes is a good cop with a few relationship problems. But, after getting shot and waking up in a hospital that seems to have gone to hell... he has much bigger problems to deal with. The dead don't seem to stay that way for one, and there seem to be no other people alive. He rides a bike to his old house, finds his family missing, is then attacked by a child, and sees what appears to be a person get shot in the head in cold blood. This is the new world, where violence is commonplace and humans are feared nearly as much as the zombies.

He wakes up in the care of a man and his child, Morgan and Duane Jones, and they explain what happened, or at least the details they know. Don't get bit, they warn him, or you'll get a fever that "burns you out." Then you come back and become like the ones outside. No one says the Zed-word, and Grimes seems to be skeptical of this new reality, peeking out the window to get a look at the "walkers."

What's interesting is that Morgan and his son Duane don't fear the zombies, they simply respect them the same way an experienced sailor fears the sea. The zombies are the ones in charge now. You stay quiet, keep the noises down, make sure they don't see your light, and you'll be fine. The zombies, at this point, aren't scary as much as they're to be pitied. "I'm sorry this happened to you," Grimes tells one of them, a woman crawling on naked leg bones, before putting a bullet through her head.

His wife and son are alive, he reasons, because who else would take only clothes and photo albums from the house? Morgan tells him there are survivors and a military presence in Atlanta, and it's there we discover just how dangerous the new world has become.

It's not about the zombies

For a first episode, this is stunning. It looks much more like a film than a TV show, and it doesn't rush to get where its going; each character is given time to breathe and comes to life before the show moves them down their respective paths. Reading the first two issues of the comics after watching the first episode of the show makes it feel as if the comics are moving at a blistering pace. This is a rare piece of horror entertainment—what the characters say and how they act are as important as what they do.

The Walking Dead has always been a dark series, and the show is just as dour. The camera never pans away from the gore, but neither does it seem titillated by it. Scenes of violence are shot straight on, daring you to blink. So far, the expected horror tropes have mostly been avoided. Instead, you're watching capable, human characters dealing with an impossible situation. "Don't pull the trigger unless you mean it," Grimes tells Duane when it's decided the child is going to learn how to use firearms. I hope you believe me when I say I'm not giving anything away when I aver that fans of the comic are going to have a hard time not wincing at that line.

Walking Dead

I watched the 90-minute pilot with a group of four friends, and I was the only one who had read the comic books. The mood was funereal after the first few minutes, and the show does a great job of giving you a sense of dread and weight as you watch. The pilot ends with a light cliffhanger, and the time zipped by very quickly. Adaptations can be hit or miss, and Robert Kirkman has written in the letters section of his comics often about wanting to do the Walking Dead correctly if it was ever brought to television. He has nothing to fear; this is an amazing first act of what promises to be a first-class show.

If you've read the comics, you'll be able to have interesting conversations about what has been changed and why; conversely, if you're new to the world, there is nothing holding you back from enjoying every minute of the show. 

If you've kept up with the comics you know how many possible locations, characters, and plot lines the show has to choose from. Sadly, almost all of them end with bad news for characters you'll learn to care about very quickly.

Walking Dead can be found on AMC every Sunday at 10pm. We'll be giving away a full set of the hardcover graphic novels, signed by Robert Kirkman, in our yearly Child's Play fundraiser.

Expand full story

You must to comment.