Dead again: Looking ahead to The Walking Dead season opener

Ol' dead eyes is back...

Warning: Spoilers ahead.  Ha, bet you thought you’d never get that warning from us!

The Walking Dead proved a divisive TV series last year. Some loved it, others thought it diverged too much from the source comics. And yet more felt it a missed opportunity.

Me? I loved it, as regular listeners/readers of the Thumbcast will hopefully remember. As a sporadic reader of the graphic novels, I wasn’t as embedded in Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard’s world as many of the hardcores, so – as with the new DC52 – didn’t come into it with a lot of baggage.

The one thing it did have in common with the comics was a tight mix of soapy emotional plotting and conflict, and brutal horror – if not identical in structure, it certainly has the same tone as the books.

The new series – which hits UK shores in mid-October – hasn’t had its troubles to seek either. Showrunner Frank Darabont exited the show spectacularly amid budget and creative wrangles with host broadcaster AMC. So after a successful debut, there’s more eyes and more pressure on The Walking Dead’s sophomore year.

Thankfully, it doesn’t disappoint. Indeed, from the getgo, it starts with one of the most tense sequences you’ll seen on TV this year.

Zombies – hunners of zombies, no less – marching relentlessly along a road, trapping our heroes in their hiding places as they try to avoid discovery by a relentless tide of the undead.

Two of the group are in immediate peril – one, oblivious to the crowd until it’s too late, is sitting alone in the camper van, while another is injured and bleeding heavily, weakening and leaving a trail of blood along the highway. Rick and his group are scattered about a motorway strewn with bodies and wrecked cars.

The opening sequence unwinds slowly and deliberately, as a moral debate of the group worrying about looting the abandoned cars gives way to relief at finding new supplies, then is replaced by utter tension as the survivors must find cover. The slow, lumbering nature of the Walking Dead zombies adds an extra layer to it, as this is no stampede. The gang must not only find cover but stay there for some time.

Comics series creator Robert Kirkman – who penned one of the most interesting moral episodes of series one – devotes a good quarter of the episode to this single opening sequence, and it acts both as a recap for the nature of the show itself and the characters and tensions within it.

From that, the show ups the pace dramatically with a chase through a nearby forest as Sophia – one of the two cute kids in the group – breaks cover only to be pursued by two undead, and Rick is forced to chase after to rescue her.

The urgency of the pursuit feels slightly at odds with the rest of the show – after spending a series, and indeed the opening 20 minutes or so of the episode, showing us the lumbering nature of the zombie menace, to have them suddenly become, if not 28 Days Later sprinters, then at least a lot quicker than their brethren feels awkward – though it does offer a nice contrast to the previous scenes.

While the show wants to focus on Rick and his family – and the tensions between Lori and Shane, her former lover and a blissfully unaware Rick’s best friend – even during the hunt for missing Sophia, the secondary characters are given enough moments to justify the ensemble nature of the show and the cast.

Dale’s admission he’s been lying about damage to the RV in order to keep the group in place and hunting for Sophia, is an interesting one. Having already been accused of being overprotective by Andrea, it’s another sign of the almost overcompensating paternalism we’ve seen from Dale over the first season continuing into the next.

The counter is Andrea, who rightly hasn’t cleared the depression which blighted her following her sister’s death last season. Having come close to committing suicide in the CDC explosion at the end of series one, she’s moody and angry at everyone in the group – but especially Dale, who she seemingly blames for almost forcing her to survive. It’s interesting they’re going down the route of overt survivor guilt with her, even after Dale returns the favour and saves her life – with an edgy performance by Laurie Holden.

The most interesting character, though, remains borderline psychopath redneck Daryl, who represents the pragmatism of the group. At one point he finds and takes a gun, concealing it from the others because Rick and Shane have decided to limit the number of firearms to protect people from potentially friendly fire.

As viewers we’re expected to perceive this as a literal Chekovian gun yet Kirkman goes in quite the opposite direction, with Daryl surrendering it at the first opportunity to Lori to ensure her group has extra protection – despite the fact he is present with them. The motivations for his behaviour are unclear – is it to just avoid lengthy debate over Rick giving the group his pistol? Is it to wind up Andrea – who has been demanding her own gun’s return? Is it an attempt at increasing his acceptance among the rest of the group? Daryl remains the least explored – yet, oddly, most believable – of the cast.

All this builds to a truly unexpected and remarkable climax – literally coming out of nowhere as a moment of quite tenderness involving a stag in the forest is spectacularly shattered. Although we’re being promised more links with the comics as this series goes along – and the finale of episode one suggests the direction that’s going – it’s nice to see the show being prepared to plough its own furrow, especially when it’s the Walking Dead’s own paternal DNA donor who’s tilling the blade.

It’s not all perfect, obviously – there’s a horrendous fx shot as the group drive out of Atlanta, with one of the fakest looking roadside pile-ups since The Day After, and poor Steven Yeung continues to make up the numbers as his character Glenn is given hee haw to do.

The new series doesn’t open with a bang, but it certainly closes the first episode with one – and with the focus moving out of the cities and into the wilds of Georgia, there’s going to be a lot more territory for The Walking Dead to cover.

The Walking Dead airs from October 21 on FXUK.  Watch the trailer below: