The Walking Dead TV Series season 1

THE MEANDERING DEAD

The Walking Dead comic book, when I read the first issue, did not grab me. “It’s 28 Days Later, in black & white, without even the benefit of Cillian Murphy’s winkie – what’s the point in that?”

Similarly, the unique selling point of actor Andrew Lincoln, in vehicles like This Life and Teachers, was his cheerful inability to retain much in the way of clothing – his thespian abilities didn’t make much of an impression. 

But I was pleasantly surprised, in both cases, to have underestimated the parties in question.

The Walking Dead comic book, written by Robert Kirkman, focuses on one Rick Grimes, a sheriff in a small Georgia town, who is shot and placed into a coma by an escaping criminal. On recovering, he discovers a different and horrifying world. The dead have risen, and the few remaining humans have banded together into uneasy alliances to try to survive under a world now ruled by zombies.

Yeah, I know, “Again?”, but where the Walking Dead comic differs radically from the rest of the Zombie-Apocalypse genre is in its depiction of the characters as more than just plot devices. Over time, we engage thoroughly with Rick and his extended group of survivours, and it emerges – as Grimes says himself explicitly at one point – that they are the revenants, the leftovers, in a world so completely altered that there is no rescue forthcoming, no conceivable going back. They, the humans, are the walking dead.

Best read in the form of the collected trade paperbacks, which is how I got converted when I was trapped for several hours on the stairway of my comic store (don’t ask) the series every so often – and you have to bear in mind that I’ve been reading comics since the start of the Paleozoic Era, so I’m not easy to surprise – comes up with scenes that genuinely stun me, actually making  me shout out , “They’re never going to get away with that!”.

Which gets you some scathing looks on the train from Victoria to Crystal Palace, trust me.

When plans were announced to adapt the Walking Dead into a TV show, I feared; feared that the tone and power of the series would be untranslatable to the small screen, and feared that Andrew Lincoln – given the deeply tragic early releases of his attempts at an American accent – would completely screw up the gig.

So far, oh, one & a half of those fears have been quelled. Lincoln has overcome the vocal obstacles so that you can concentrate on his performance rather than a dodgy accent, and so far he’s perfectly epitomised the tightly-lidded control of Rick Grimes, superficially bland but with the danger of losing control discreetly evident. It’s the most nuanced presentation of his I’ve seen so far.

As to the storyline – well, kind of but not really yet. It’s still restrained, compared to the comic book. And given the hoohah that has arisen in the USA, from people unfamiliar with the original comic, that’s probably just as well. It seems our cousins in the Colonies couldn’t handle a literal adaptation of the comic. But where the TV show lacks the impact of the comic, it manages a profound sadness, a mourning, for the world that died, reducing the heroes to the level of scavengers in a planetwide graveyard. It communicates the magnitude of the loss in a manner that the comic never entirely conveyed.

The co-stars are a very mixed bag, and the series’ major failing is that it shakes down along purely stereotypical gender lines; the men get to do all the heavy lifting and heroism, and the women have all the soap-opera and hysterics.  Sarah Wayne Callies, as Grime’s wife Lori, is so bland that you wonder what there is about her, other than a pretty face and presumably the usual complement of ladyparts, which would induce two men (Grimes and his former cop partner, Shane) to obsess over her.  Jon Bernthal, as the aforementioned Shane, strives heroically to big-up his role despite its inadequacy. (In the comics, Shane was an early fatality. The writers haven’t apparently decided, having wimped out on his original shocking demise, what else to do with him.) Steven Yeun’s Glenn is a spot-on piece of casting, with Glenn’s reluctant heroics being perfectly transferred to the screen, and Andrew Rothenberg (Jim) and Jeffrey DeMunn (Dale) also shine in their supporting roles.

The ladies, as previously mentioned, fare less well. Lori, our heroine, is positively beige in her dullness. The feisty Andrea, a crackshot hellion in the comics, is a whimpering kitten on the screen. Only two of the women make positive impressions. Melissa McBride turns in a compelling performance as abused wife Carol, but despite the excellence of her acting, it’s not exactly a game-changer for female roles.  And Jeryl Prescott Sales, as ‘red shirt in the landing party’ Jacqui, invests her minuscule role with a dignity and strength that makes you wish the script had, at any point, actually given her something to do. The TV show has not yet reached the point at which sword-wielding kick-ass diva Michonne joined the comics’ cast, and it’s looking like it might never do so. I fear she’d be a little too much woman for this show!

Trailing the field in the acting stakes are Norman Redus and Michael Rooker as redneck racist brothers who are so ineptly presented as to make you long for the subtle interplay and sophisticated banter of Love Thy Neighbour. Throw them to the zombies, and put them out of our misery!

Despite reservations about some of the casting and all of the gender politics, the Walking Dead TV show has – apart from the one misfiring episode where we met the cute & cuddly streetgang – been an absorbing series. Neccessarily abbreviated because of the production expense (the entire series, at only six episodes, could be regarded as one extended ‘pilot’), its success has ensured a longer second season of 13 episodes. Hopefully it will fulfill the great promise of the first season and pick up the pace from its intriguing, but somewhat leisurely, established tempo.