Frank Darabont leaves THE WALKING DEAD

Writer-director Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption) has stepped down as showrunner of AMC's The Walking Dead, halfway through production on the new 13-episode second season. His replacement is expected to be Glen Mazzara (showrunner of Starz's Crash), who's been working as Darabont's second-in-command after joining the show with a group of new writers—after Darabont disbanded the first season's team. (Update: this has now been confirmed as happening.)

It's not been revealed why Darabont has felt the need to quit, but he's been unhappy with AMC's plans to trim the show's budget, and there were rumours he found it hard to adjust to the demanding pace of TV production (as he comes from a movie background), but this is all just speculation. I wouldn't be surprised if there's some truth in all that, however. The show clearly struggled to produce six episodes last year, so doubling the order to a standard thirteen may have felt particularly gruelling for Darabont.

I have a feeling Darabont would have been happier making The Walking Dead as a series of movies, doesn't like the time/money constraints of television, and perhaps is too authorial to enjoy working in a writers' room. But who knows. Hopefully Darabont will release a statement soon—but those things are usually misleading and don't get at the truth behind these matters. We probably won't know what happened for a few years or more.

It's speculated that Darabont could retain some kind of credit on the show, but without him to steer the ship it'll be interesting to see how The Walking Dead changes halfway through season 2. Hey, it may even improve...

THE WALKING DEAD returns to AMC on 16 October.

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Comic-Con 2011 panels: DEXTER, FRINGE, SPARTACUS, TORCHWOOD, TRUE BLOOD & THE WALKING DEAD

San Diego Comic-Con is winding down for another year. I'm sure most of you have been watching and reading the coverage online in some capacity, but I thought I'd embed a few videos of various panels that are relevant to DMD's own coverage. Below are the panels for Dexter, Fringe, Spartacus, True Blood, Torchwood and The Walking Dead. Most were filmed using the "wobbly-cam" that's all the rage, so the quality's not great, but I commend Starz for ensuring their Spartacus panel was professionally recorded in its entirety. (You can click through the subsequent "parts" of each video via YouTube.)

A few more panels may be added soon, when they become available. But in the meantime: enjoy!

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Trailers: SPARTACUS: VENGEANCE & THE WALKING DEAD, season 2 (Comic-Con)

Starz apparently showed a fantastic trailer for Spartacus: Vengeance at Comic-Con yesterday, but that hasn't hit the internet yet. But we do have the briefer tease (above), which gives you an idea of the increased scale of production in season 2 (horse-riding sequences set against greenscreen will be achieved), plus our first look at Liam McIntyre (replacing Andy Whitfield as the eponymous Thracian warrior).

McIntyre, speaking at Comic-Con:

"It's a great privilege, a great honor, it's a great responsibility. I was a fan. I would have been sitting down there [in the audience]. All of a sudden, I find myself sitting up here. Everyone can agree Andy [Whitfield] was amazing. The best thing I can do is bust my ass and honor that legacy trying to make season 2 as amazingly as exciting as season 1. And that's all I can do."

The Comic-Con panel, which included showrunner Steven S. DeKnight, also confirmed the return of Ashur and that the story will cleave close to how Stanley Kubrick's movie version ended.

SPARTACUS: VENGEANCE returns to Starz in January 2012.

Comic-Con also gave us a four-minute trailer for The Walking Dead's second season, which certainly looks promising. I didn't really like the first season, which fell flat for me after an entertaining feature-length pilot. Showrunner Frank Darabont has apparently recruited a team of writers who are actually fans of the comic-book now, so I hope that means there'll be more passion on display. Last year's was almost excruciatingly earnest and lacked a sense of pace, rhythm, and... well, enough zombies biting people.

I still have my doubts about The Walking Dead, though. I think there's an audience who will watch anything with zombies in it, those people number greatly, and there's no alternative for them on TV. This will be a hit whatever it does. But for me, I didn't really like any of the characters, and because I can't see a plausible solution for a zombie apocalypse, a TV series of this nature has a constant feeling of futility and depression. A zombie movie can be brilliant if depressing, but you're done with it in two-hours. The Walking Dead could be on-air for another five years or more. By the time Andrew Lincoln's blasting a corpse in the head for the sixtieth time, I'm just not sure I'll care, but we'll see if season 2 manages to change my mind. At least from the trailer it looks like the characters are on the move, instead of hanging around that tedious mountain camp.

THE WALKING DEAD returns to AMC on 16 October.

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Video: 'The Walking Dead' VFX Showreel

"The Walking Dead" Demo Reel 2010 from Stargate Studios on Vimeo.

Awhile back I showcased a brilliant greenscreen-themed video by the special-effects company Stargate Studios. Well, here comes another one, but this time focusing exclusively on their work for AMC's zombie drama The Walking Dead. It's incredible that so much of what you see (the landscapes, the weather, the quantity of zombies) is created entirely in a computer. You assume certain things are done digitally (like the limbless zombie girl crawling on the lawn), but it never occurred to me that so many backgrounds were faked using greenscreens. Incredible work.

Includes spoilers for the entirety of season 1, for those who have yet to see it.

[via io9.]

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'THE WALKING DEAD' 1.6 – "TS-19"

Considering Frank Darabont knew AMC only commissioned six episodes of The Walking Dead (as a litmus test), there's really no excuse for the problems with structure and pace it's had. Having delivered a pilot that setup the idea of Sheriff's Deputy Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) searching a zombie-infested dystopia for his missing family, they were reunited the following week; having spent half the season teasing the repercussions of leaving racist Merle handcuffed to a rooftop, that storyline had zero impact on proceedings since episode 4. Undoubtedly these things will be returned to next year, but why was it so hard to tell a relatively self-contained story in six installments?

This finale was good fun and reasonably dramatic, buoyed by a great performance from Noah Emmerich as the haunted Dr Jenner, but the constraints of the season's length didn't do it any favours. If this had been a regular cable season, we'd probably have arrived at the CDC facility in episode 7 and stayed there for 3 episodes (at the very least), but instead everything was truncated to an hour. And that just isn't long enough to feel true elation that the survivors found an underground paradise of hot showers, heated rooms, books, booze and food; or depressed when everyone realized Dr Jenner's plotting to incinerate them all in an explosion because he believes their predicament is so bleak. Considering the mid-season slack, I'm fairly sure expanding the CDC section of the storyline was achievable. After all, did we need that episode with the pointless return to Atlanta City to search for Merle, which led to the storyline with the street gang protecting an old folk's home?

It speaks to the problems of this series that the teaser was an isolated flashback, explaining why and how Rick was abandoned in hospital to begin with -- although the reveal wasn't anything too surprising. Best friend Shane had simply believed Rick was dead and left him behind as the hospital was overrun by zombies and soldiers shooting people arbitrarily. Then again, if Shane truly believed his friend was dead, why bother blocking his room door to prevent zombies getting in?

The characters are beginning to leave a better impression now, although I still don't really care about the supposed leads (Rick, Shane, Lori). For me, those actors have been eclipsed by Laurie Holden and Jeffrey DeMunn, who are much more compelling on-screen. The scene when Andrea decided to stay behind and die in Jenner's "painless" high-temperature explosion (as she doesn't think she has anything worth living for now her sister Amy's dead), was particularly good – leading to Dale's high-risk tactic to keep Laurie alive (staying with her, making her realize her life still matters and means something to other people). That was all far more compelling than the dull love-triangle between Rick, Shane and Lori, which the show seems to think is a brilliantly compelling storyline we're all on tenterhooks about. But with no real insight into the strength of the Grimes marriage pre-zombies, the depth of Rick and Shane's friendship, or exactly why Lori started sleeping with Shane so soon after her husband's "death" (the hussy), it feels like an ill-conceived cliché the show's more captivated by than anyone else.

Overall, "TS-19" kept me entertained and, while it offered nothing very new or interesting, there was enough good moments and exciting scenes to make you forget its deficiencies. Basically, there was nothing particularly bad about this finale itself, the problem was more to do with season 1's length and structure as a whole. Too much about the preceding five episodes feels badly handled, knowing how much played no part in the finale itself. The show wasn't planned very well, and I personally don't think it delivered on the promise of a serialized zombie series. The characters weren't all that special, the storyline was either predictable or clichéd, and there just wasn't enough time to make various developments and deaths feel earned or shocking. A great example here is the moment when a woman from the survivor's group decided to stay with Jenner and accept his offer of a painless death; it could have been a big emotional send-off, but what was that woman's name? Who was she? What was her back-story?

The Walking Dead will return next October, by all accounts, with a standard 13 episode run. I'm hoping lessons will be learned from this six-episode miniseries, which has felt very much like a test-run. Then again, considering the record-breaking ratings for AMC, there's a chance Frank Darabont won't want to risk upsetting the apple cart and instead just deliver more of the same. And while the show's proven there's a huge audience who want to see zombies on TV, I hope Darabont's not naïve enough to believe The Walking Dead's ratings validate the show's current quality. It could really be so much more.

Asides

• Any thoughts on what Jenner whispered to Rick at the end of the episode? Apparently, it's very predictable if you've read the comic-books, so don't spoil things if you know.
• Jenner revealed that French scientists were closest to creating a cure for whatever virus has caused the dead to rise up, so getting to France may be a long-term goal for the series. I guess they just need to find an airplane pilot or the captain of a ship with good navigation skills.
• It's been brought to my attention how close to Lost this show is, with a few obvious parallels and similarities. The survivors base-camp could be considered beach-camp, the CDC was essentially The Walking Dead's version of The Hatch (containing its own version of a lonely, half-crazy Desmond), and the season climaxed with a clock countdown and gargantuan explosion. Of course, Walking Dead was published before Lost aired, and both shows deal with broad elements common to many survival-based ensemble shows, so I'm not suggesting there's anything intentional going on here. But it's fun to note what the two shows have in common.

WRITERS: Adam Fierro & Frank Darabont
DIRECTOR: Guy Ferland
TRANSMISSION: 10 December 2010, FX/HD, 10PM

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Channel 5 grab 'The Walking Dead'

Channel 5 have secured the British terrestrial broadcast rights to The Walking Dead. The hugely successful zombie drama series is currently airing on digital channel FX in the UK (five days after it premieres on AMC in the US), but has the potential to reach a much larger audience on Five. Let's hope they treat it with some respect, unlike their ghastly scheduling of AMC's other hit Breaking Bad...

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'THE WALKING DEAD' 1.5 - "Wildfire"

It's the penultimate episode already, in the week where Frank Darabont's allegedly decided to fire all of The Walking Dead's writing staff. This is either: (a) the misjudgment of a writer/director steeped in the world of film, who doesn't understand how to run a TV series by utilizing fellow writer's talents, meaning he's resorted to clearing the deck and intending to hire more pliable freelancers; or (b) Darabont realized his existing writers weren't delivering the goods, so he's deciding to start afresh now the show's a massive hit for AMC -- even going so far as to stay on as showrunner, meaning ex-Dexter honcho Charles H. Eglee (who believed the torch would be passed to him once Darabont got the ball rolling in season 1) has decided to leave the project...

All fascinating office politics, ripe for discussion. I'd much rather Eglee took control of this show than Darabont, to get the ball rolling. However, to the episode itself: "Wildfire" was actually pretty decent, if only because it was suspended from three great moments. I loved Andrea (Laurie Holden) keeping an overnight vigil of her dead sister Amy (Emma Bell), causing great concern in the camp that she's gone crazy, only to realize she was just waiting for Amy to turn into a zombie, so she could apologize to her in that liminal state between death and reanimation. A wonderful sequence, brilliantly played by Holden, who's acting everyone else off the screen now.

I also enjoyed seeing Jim (Andrew Rothenberg) face a similar fate to Amy, as he revealed he's been bitten by a zombie and is beginning the uncomfortable process of turning into a "walker". It's just a shame that Jim's not a character we've know for long, so there's nothing to feel very upset about, although he's easily one of the more interesting characters. Why are they killing off someone who, in one episode last week, became more fascinating than Rick (Andrew Lincoln)? It was also disappointing that the suggestion that Jim's psychic (having inexplicably dug graves that are were needed to bury their friends by nightfall) appears to have been a total red herring. Again, it seems a waste to be killing Jim if he could have become this spiritual figure in the camp.

Finally, having the survivors finally leave base-camp in search of the CDC facility was a huge relief, as the show was starting to stagnate in that wooded mountain location. I understand The Walking Dead's a low-budget series compared to mainstream US networks output, but in comparison to the BBC's Survivors remake (which is made on a pittance compared to AMC shows) it was beginning to look, ironically, very lifeless and plodding. I guess UK producers/writers are used to these brief six-episode runs, so they manage to ensure things keep a steady pace and there's more movement. For example: I'm so happy there's another frontier of the story opening up now, with the suicidal scientist Dr Jenner (Noah Emmerich) at the underground CDC facility, working on a cure for the "walker virus" single-handed with limited samples, but why wasn't this introduced a few weeks ago?

Overall, "Wildfire" wasn't strong enough to get my hooked into this show, but it had more moments I appreciated (such as Jim being left alone underneath a tree to die), and it eventually kicked the show into a more adventurous gear. But I still find most of the characters incredibly dry and the overall story quite sluggish and dull, and fill my time noticing plot holes and inconsistencies. This week: why was Daryl (Norman Reedus) totally unconcerned about finding his brother Merle this week, or leaving him a message should he return to base-camp looking for vengeance? The issue with Merle has been the prime source of contention in the show, but was totally ignored this week.

WRITER: Glen Mazzara
DIRECTOR: Ernest Dickerson
TRANSMISSION: 3 December 2010, FX/HD, 10PM

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'THE WALKING DEAD' 1.4 - "Vatos"

Possibly the best episode yet, despite a saggy middle, but I still find this show annoyingly flat overall. I just don't care about anyone, and the situations the characters find themselves in are just Walking Dead's version of countless other moments from apocalyptic/zombie fiction. I actually get quite bored halfway through.

It also continues to be very stupid: everyone treats Rick's (Andrew Lincoln) lost bag of guns as if they're the last firearms on the planet, when the whole city of Atlanta must be full of empty gun shops just waiting to be looted (this is America, right?), and there was a climactic zombie attack on base-camp that everyone deserved, as they'd apparently taken no precautions against zombies invading at night. Heck, a perimeter of fishing wire suspending empty baked bean cans would have been something to alert them, right? What exactly are their defenses when old codger Dale (Jeffrey DeMunn) isn't standing on his RV's roof with binoculars during the day? Everyone's told to keep their fingers and say a prayer before bedtime?

Still, there were moments I enjoyed. Watching Rick, T-Dog (IronE Singleton) and Daryl (Norman Reedus) track Merle through the department store, following the footsteps of a desperate man who sawed his hand off and cauterized the wound, was more tense than anything involving the zombies. Although, in another example of character stupidity, why didn't Merle just saw his thumb off to escape those handcuffs?

There was also a nice opening scene between Andrea (Laurie Holden) and her sister Amy (Emma Bell), fishing alone in the quarry's lake, reminiscing about their presumed-dead parents. It only existed to create belated emotional attachment to Amy, before she was viciously attacked and killed in the climactic zombie attack, but that's acceptable. Holden's wailing performance over the body of her sister did more to sell the closeness of their relationship than any writing could deliver. Still, it's a shame Amy was a character I barely knew existed before this episode, and four episodes isn't enough time to grow attached to someone who only had perhaps 5 minutes of notable screen time.

The primary storyline, with Glenn (Steven Yeun) captured by a street gang, had a twist that worked well (the mob were actually compassionate folk, protecting a retirement home's elderly residents), and the backbone of that idea reminded me of something Survivors would have done. It was just a shame it came across as rather preachy here, mainly because of gang leader Guillermo's stupid dialogue.

Overall, "Vatos" (written by the comic's creator Robert Kirkman) was entertaining and contained two good sequences, but I'm still not craving this show. It just is what it is. But I'm intrigued by the addition of Jim (Andrew Rothenburg), a survivor who freaked everyone out by tirelessly digging graves all day. At first, it appeared to be a symptom of sunstroke and guilt (his family were slaughtered by zombies, allowing him to escape), but it became clearer it might have been a premonition, as the day ended with a camp full of corpses now requiring those graves he dug. We're possibly embarking on a story where Jim comes to believe he's in communion with God, right? A cliché, but one that could be fun.

As usual, I suppose everyone else thought this was the bee's knees?

WRITER: Robert Kirkman
DIRECTOR: Johan Renck
TRANSMISSION: 26 November 2010, FX/HD, 10PM

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'THE WALKING DEAD' 1.3 - "Tell It To The Frogs"

This wasn't as fun as the premiere, but it was a big improvement over "Guts" and definitely the best installment in terms of characterization. Not that there are any characters who are fresh and interesting creations, but "Tell It To The Frogs" at least spent more time in their company. In so doing, it's given The Walking Dead a stronger foundation to build-on from here; a reason to care for people who, until now, were little more than extras. I remain ambivalent about the long-term potential of this show (it's hard to determine what the "goal" is, beyond everyday survival in an open-ended zombie milieu), but this is tempered by knowledge the comic-book source is 7 years old and still being read. It must surely be leading somewhere, right?

This week, the survivors of the department store crisis made their way back to the mountain base-camp, where Rick (Andrew Lincoln) was reunited with his wife Lori (Sarah Wayne Callies) and son Carl (Chandler Riggs). So much for the overarching storyline of one man trying to find his missing family amidst a zombie apocalypse. You could argue it was refreshing to get this far in Rick's mission so quickly, but I can't help thinking it's a very premature move. The emotional issue is that Lori has since started sleeping with Rick's best friend Shane (Jon Bernthal) -- something Lori's now determined to put in the past, seeing as her husband's alive and well -- but as we have no pre-apocalypse attachment to her marriage, or sympathy for Shane's feelings for her, it's hard to really care. I think they should have kept the Grimes family separated, so we could grow to appreciate Rick's love for his family (maybe via some flashbacks), while seeing Lori and Shane get so close that it would feel like a bigger wrench when Rick wandered into camp. As it played out, it just seems to have killed the pilot episode's biggest emotional hook: one man, left for dead, trying to reunite with his family.

Still, "Tell It To The Frogs" earned some credit for showing us the ramifications of the end-of-the-world on society; as the women find themselves washing everyone's laundry in a lake, while the men are out hunting deer or planning rescue missions. Overnight, the gender politics have regressed by a few thousand years. One survivor, Ed (Adam Minarovich), is also becoming a problem because he's not a team player, and now finds himself in a world where the law can't be enforced by authorities. He's later revealed to be abusive to his wife Carol (Melissa McBride), and earned himself a harsh beating from Shane. In this world, violence is the only way to maintain a semblance of order, and that's fine if the strongest people in charge are the most reasonable and levelheaded, but I'm sure the tables will turn sooner or later.

It was good to get to know the camp-site characters, if only in broad strokes. Most interesting was the presence of Daryl Dixon (Norman Reedus), the brother of the racist Merle (Michael Rooker) they've left on the department store rooftop, handcuffed to a pipe with hungry zombies clamoring at a locked door. Rick and T-Dog (IronE Singleton) are wracked with guilt over leaving Merle to die of hunger and exposure, so form a rescue party to head back into Atlanta and free him, while also retrieving much-needed weaponry. The episode's climax, showing that Merle has sawn off his own hand to escape, was so inevitable it lost all impact, but it certainly adds spice knowing Merle's out there, likely keen to get his revenge on those who left him behind...

"Tell It To The Frogs" certainly achieved its aim; introduce the characters properly, develop some relationships between them, give us a clearer sense of the six-part season's direction, seal the tone of the show, but I'm still a little bored by what I'm seeing. That's partly because the zombie genre is well-trodden ground, but also because the BBC's remake of Survivors covered similar territory recently -- especially regarding the societal upheaval. For me, there's nothing here I haven't seen before and done better, basically. It still needs time before the show's own characters and situation has evolved enough that I'm invested in this particular universe, because right now it reminds me of a park where everyone's playing games I've been playing elsewhere for awhile.

Asides

• It just occurred to me that Sarah Wayne Callies is starring in a drama where there's a character called T-Dog and a one-handed man, having previously appeared in Prison Break, which starred the one-handed T-Bag.
• I guess the explanation for why nobody went to rescue Rick stands up to cursory scrutiny (everyone was told patients were being evacuated to the city), but I'm still very confused about the length of time Rick was in a hospital bed.
• I'm also unsure about how long Lori and Shane have been having an affair. It feels like it's recent (i.e. since Rick "died"), but that makes Lori look really bad. If they've been having an affair since before Rick was hospitalized, that makes more sense, but for whatever reason the show's done a poor job making that clear.

WRITER: Charles H. Eglee, Jack LoGiudice & Frank Darabont (story by Charles H. Eglee & Jack LoGiudice)
DIRECTOR: Gwyneth Horder-Payton
TRANSMISSION: 19 November 2010, FX/HD, 10PM

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TV Ratings: 'The Walking Dead', FX

We already know The Walking Dead's a smash-hit in America for AMC (drawing a record-breakng 5.3m for the premiere), and success continues in the UK. FX have just released details of the British premiere's popularity, where it attracted 736,000 viewers on 5 November, which increases to 1m when you include the week's repeat airings.

Jason Thorp, Managing Director of Fox International Channels UK:

"In an industry with fierce competition and a growing number of free-to-air channels, you need stand out content to reach a million viewers with a debuting show. The Walking Dead's performance is equal to our highest rated programmes NCIS, Dexter and True Blood. I can say with confidence that FX, despite being tucked away down the EPG has yet again stepped up to the plate as the destination for great original drama."

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'THE WALKING DEAD' 1.2 - "Guts"

I don't begrudge people having their fun, but "Guts" was further evidence that The Walking Dead has little that's fresh and, more importantly, interesting to impart to its readymade audience. On a superficial level of watching people fend off masses of shuffling zombies, it has its entertaining moments, but nothing you can't see done a million times better in the movies Walking Dead blatantly steals from. I could accept "Guts" taking place in a department store as a homage to Dawn Of The Dead, were it not for last week's homage's to many other movies. So far, The Walking Dead's best ideas are unoriginal and less successfully reprised, and its new ideas are plain stupid. That's not a great position to be in, seeing as this is only episode 2 of a series that's likely to be around for a good few years to come.

Continuing from last week, Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) is trapped in a tank that's being swarmed by hundreds of zombies on an abandoned street in Atlanta. The impressive aerial shot confirms his jeopardy and impossible odds of escaping from confinement, so God knows why there's no sign of commotion from inside the tank itself. Do they have sound-proof tanks? Acting on the advice of a mysterious voice on the tank's radio (which boils down to "get out of the tank and the swarms of zombies from the establishing aerial shot will be magically reduced to a few shuffling bystanders you can kill, then proceed to run into an alley and climb a ladder to the rooftop, because zombies have forgotten how to climb"), Rick finds himself with a group of ethnically diverse survivors who've taken refuge in a department store. The black guy, the Mexican, the blonde woman, the black woman, the white supremacist, the Asian, etc. They were waiting for an everyman Caucasian, so Rick showed up just in the nick of time!

There followed an hour of the survivors trying to implement a plan to escape their besieged store, before the zombies break inside. After a pointless attempt to access a sewer (seriously, what a pointless moment), Rick instead decides to drag the corpse of a zombie inside, dismember its body (with the most cartoonish squelches imaginable), then smear himself and rescuer Glenn (Steven Yeun) with the poor man's blood and entrails. This should disguise them from the zombies wandering around outside, who will be fooled into believing Rick and Glenn are dead, because of their rotting smell, giving them enough time to reach a truck and use it to rescue their waiting friends. But, uh oh, the regular as clockwork 5pm shower might put the kibosh on that plan. We all know how quickly rain cleans the smell of rotting flesh and dangling feet, right?

Once again, you can't fault the production itself. This show has a big budget, and it's therefore pulling off movie quality scenes of desolate city streets and a multitude of actors in zombie make-up. It's not too shy about the gore either, which I'm sure pleases a lot of people. But, really, if this was a movie people would be tearing it apart as a lazy rehash of George Romero's Greatest Hits and frustrated by the limp, stereotypical characters. Are we even supposed to like Rick's wife Lori (Sarah Wayne Callis), seeing as she's having sex with her husband's best friend, what, a few weeks after Rick was left to die in that hospital? It's either very bad storytelling (as the writers have no idea how a recently widowed woman would react to the death of her husband), they want us to hate Lori, or they've been having an affair since before the zombie apocalypse. If it's the latter, I retract my complaint, but it's still not a great way to introduce those characters.

Overall, "Guts" was distinctly average and I can't see why anyone who's seen Dawn Of The Dead (which is, surely, most people who would tune into Walking Dead) would hold this up as a great twist on the genre. So far it's been nothing but a lazy copy, which I'm sure the writers, director Michelle MacLaren (Breaking Bad), and the actors all had fun creating. I think the zombie genre is one that's more susceptible to repetition than any other horror genre, so there needs to be strong differences, or fresh ideas, to keep people gripped. But, after two episodes, The Walking Dead isn't delivering for me. The characters are either clichés (what a waste of Michael Rooker!), dull (sorry Andrew Lincoln), unlikeable (Sarah Wayne Callies), or vacuous (everyone else). Bring back Lennie James from last week, that's what I say.

WRITER: Frank Darabont
DIRECTOR: Michelle MacLaren
TRANSMISSION: 12 November 2010, FX/HD, 10PM

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'THE WALKING DEAD' 1.1 - "Days Gone Bye"

Shuffle over to Obsessed With Film, where I've reviewed the first part of AMC's eagerly-awaited zombie drama THE WALKING DEAD, written and directed by Frank Darabont, brought to you by the makers of scope-sighted rifles...

Zombies made a successful comeback at the box-office this past decade, but their prior absence from cinemas was a mere blip. Compare this to television, which in the 42 years since George Romero's Night Of The Living Dead, hasn't even tackled the shuffling undead in an ongoing drama series… until now. AMC, the cable network responsible for award-winning hits like Mad Men and Breaking Bad, have decided to adapt the 2003 comic-book series The Walking Dead, recruiting filmmaker Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption) to bring the comic's inked panels to life. The result of this union delivers a beautiful production with excellent tonality, together with a budget to do the post-apocalyptic premise justice, but the actual story and internal logic of premiere "Days Gone Bye" unfortunately hit some snags... Continue reading...

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UK premiere of 'The Walking Dead': FX, 5 November

I received my The Walking Dead press pack from FX yesterday (see it here), which gives the UK premiere date as 5 November. That's 5 days behind the US premiere on 31 October (Halloween). So now I have a decision to make: do I review at the US or UK pace? Any reviews I write following AMC's Sunday airings won't get posted until Tuesdays, but FX's airings on Fridays would go up on Saturdays -- so there's actually only 4 days difference. FX also guarantees me a sparkling HD broadcast, and the end of the week is less cluttered with TV shows, so easier to find the time to write. Having weighed up the pro's and con's, I'll be following this zombie series at the UK pace on FX. Who's with me?

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AMC order 'Walking Dead' season 2

Zombie epic The Walking Dead doesn't premiere in the US until 31 October, but AMC have already greenlit a second season. Even better, while the cable network only ordered six episodes this year, season 2 will be extended to a more traditional 13 hours. Filming begins next February, for an autumn 2011 release.

Frank Darabont, writer-director-producer, on season 2:

"It would be great not just to get out of the heat, but to present a different idea to the audience visually and tonally by having it be winter. There's some really cool stuff that [the comic's writer Robert] Kirkman did, where they find the one zombie that's frozen to the ground. I’d never seen that before and that's really cool."

"Or when [the character of] Michonne shows up -- and boy, is she a character I can't wait to get to -- when she comes striding out of the wasteland like a Clint Eastwood f***ing spaghetti western character cross-melded with some samurai movie, like the Baby Cart character with the f***ing sword, and there’s just a little drift of snow in the air. I would love to put that on film."

Update (2 Sep 10): Unfortunately, this news has been debunked as a rumour by Darabont himself, speaking to AICN.

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TRAILER: 'The Walking Dead'

AMC have released the first trailer for their six-part zombie series The Walking Dead, which was previously shown at the San Diego Comic-Con this summer. They also confirmed the series will premiere on 31 October (Halloween) in the US. Here in the UK, FX will be airing the series shortly after AMC, and FX's own trailer claims it will begin in November. Hopefully that means we'll only have a day's wait and it will start on 1 November, but who knows...

My reaction to the trailer itself? It certainly looks as slick and epic as the creative team behind it would have you expect (director/writer Frank Darabont, producer Gale Anne Hurd), and it's nice to see Britain's own Andrew Lincoln in the lead. I have high hopes for this show and I don't think it will disappoint. That said, nothing about this trailer screamed originality to me. Maybe it's because the zombie subgenre is so overexposed now, but there weren't any visuals or ideas presented in the trailer that felt particularly fresh. Well, beyond the suggestion there's going to be a tank versus zombie horde sequence.

I haven't read the best-selling graphic novels The Walking Dead is based on, but I hear they're very popular primarily because the characterization is far beyond what you'd expect from the zombie genre, so maybe this show's trump card just can't be communicated in a 4-minute trailer. I certainly hope so, as I love ensemble survival dramas where you really become invested in the characters, so any deaths have impact and resonance.

What do you make of this trailer?

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