My brother introduced me, via iTunes, to AMC’s The Walking Dead – a 28-days-later style post-apocalyptic Zombie tv-series set in the American South – near the city of Atlanta. I’ve never really been one for horror – my cousins Rey and Anand used to lap this stuff up as kids, but I somehow never took great joy in being scared – amazed and amused were more my preference.

But the Walking Dead is very, very good television indeed. Whilst the characteristics of the zombies and the conventions of the genre are left undisturbed and ordinary, where it excels – as ArvD pointed out to me – is in the depth of the characters it manages to get across so rapidly. I’m only three episodes in but already have an excellent sense of half a dozen major protagonists.

For those curious, small-town sheriff Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) wakes up in hospital following a car chase and a shootout that sees him badly injured. He’s been out of it for several weeks and in the meantime pretty much everyone in town has either been killed, zombiefied or both. Unable to find his kids, with the help of a couple of other survivors, he raids the police station for supplies and heads to nearby Atlanta, where reports say there is a camp of survivors, in the hope of finding his missing wife and son.

It kinds of goes from there.

Really high production values, incredible performances, and very tight writing – incorporating some brave silences for mainstream TV-writing – has seen this renewed for a second season. Andrew Lincoln’s accent (he’s British playing Southern) is flawless.

I’m going to have to find gaps when Amanda isn’t around to watch it, as I don’t see her being sold on the genre regardless of the quality of the writing… there is a high level of gore involved.

Trailer: