I’ve got a thing for zombies. Not in a weird way, like where I have to use the deep web to satisfy it, but it’s definitely still a thing.

For me, the most exciting thing to happen in the past few years is the shuffling emergence of zombies appearing everywhere in film and TV, largely in thanks to AMC who began adapting the comic series The Walking Dead into the catchily titled AMC Presents: The Walking Dead five years ago.

I was hooked from the first “Don’t Dead Open Inside” sign right through to the rise and fall of the first Ricktatorship, and now onwards to the unavoidable second one coming in the next season. So imagine my glee when I realized I didn’t have to wait until October to get my undead fix as AMC announced that spin-off Fear The Walking Dead was arriving on my screen in September.. Now imagine my crushing disappointment in discovering that it isn’t all that good.

Maybe I’ve unfairly judged it against its predecessor. How could it possibly hope to compete against what is arguably one of the must-watch shows on TV at the moment? However, upon watching the first three episodes of Fear The Walking Dead I felt a little like I was being force fed methadone when what I really wanted was the sweet taste of Walking Dead smack. I was being weaned off the hard stuff with something recognizable as the real thing, but ultimately lacks the kick that I crave. It just doesn’t quite cut it and leaves me feeling itchy and sweaty and I end up trawling to the dark corners of the internet hoping for some leaked spoilers from the real thing just to satisfy me – one last hit and then I’ll go cold turkey, I promise.

The problem is I can’t really put my finger on what I don’t like about Fear. Everything is shaping up in the right way for it to start exploding into the conflict heavy, character rich, narrative-twisting series that its bigger brother has become. It’s just that sometimes it’s hard to see this emerging from Fear as it simply appears to be stomping over old ground before it reaches the lake of familiarity, where it will jump in and tread water until it inevitably sinks when it’s tired or (most likely) the fans will hold its head underneath to finish the job.

Where Fear attempts to be different however, it excels. We’re dealing with members from a separated family who are randomly thrown together with strangers who are obviously hiding secrets to what may be happening in the wider world. Among them is Nick, a problem child with a drug addiction (try coming down during the apocalypse) and the ticking time bomb of an injured Griselda, which will clearly make for a harrowing scene when devoted husband Daniel is forced to put her down. This is the stuff I want to see. However, the other stock characters featured here have become the vanilla ice-cream of the genre: the hysterical teenager losing her boyfriend of four weeks to the biters, the over-protective mother who needs the man in her life to come back and rescue her and the gruff family man who’s just trying to keep everyone safe. We know what’s on offer, but no-one’s going to buy it over the double-chocolate chip with extra fudge in the container next to it.

It looks gorgeous at points and is shot in a much more experimental way than The Walking Dead. The shades of light and dark are woven together beautifully when the power flickers on and off, as it would do as the world comes to an end and there are some expertly measured frames with beams from torches and flickering candles jutting out or bathing everything in a rather creepy orange glow.

Every shot is beautifully; crafted rather than just ‘stuck in’ so that two characters can have a conversation. The set pieces in Fear are also stunning with countless extras running around in anarchistic frenzy and you truly get the sense of the breakdown as faceless riot police try to maintain what’s left of society.

When it’s not shaking uncontrollably against a backdrop of violence the camera teases us with long shots of lone walkers being dispatched or slumping off into the distance behind walls, making us second guess their fate. However, we all know that (SPOILER ALERT) the dead come back to life and herein lies the greatest problem with Fear and the zombie genre as a whole: we know far more than the characters do. It frustrates us and at times feels a little insulting to the diehard fan. The greatest example of this can be seen when we are finally shown the back of a bouncy castle where we know that someone has been dispatched by a walker and… shock-horror… it’s covered in blood.

Although it’s helpful sometimes to let the audience squirm in the knowledge that there’s something around the corner that our hero is obliviously stepping around, it’s just irritating in Fear. The main characters seem obsessed with the idea that the plague, which has come to wipe us all from the Earth, is nothing more than a temporary sickness. A common cold that has those it infects eat the brains of those who don’t have it. Taking two aspirin and sleeping it off isn’t going to help much, but it feels as if they’re insisting that it might. The back-and-forths between characters about the dead feel like they could have taken place in any previous apocalypse drama, or could even be replaced with a frightened-confused emoji face. It’d save time in the long run.

The dialogue is one of the strongest points of The Walking Dead. Subtext heavy moments where characters are talking about power, plans and pain, cloaked in the banality of a discussion on the weather or a board game they are playing. My favourite scene from the original series involves The Governor teaching a young child about how life is going to be after the outbreak using the pieces on a chess board. This runs The Wire’s explanation of gang culture close for the best subtextual scene ever written. Fear tries this in episode three, with Madison breaking out the family favourite, Monopoly, so that her children can discuss their absent biological father through the medium of properties and metal shoes. However, the scene isn’t allowed to linger, so it becomes just another beat in the story before we move to the creepy house next door rather than letting us enjoy learning something about how our new heroes actually feel about their dead dad.

Fear The Walking Dead so far feels like a missed opportunity, but I do concede that we are only three episodes in and there’s obviously some stuff to come that we might not have seen before (here’s hoping). At the close of the last episode the little green men (the army, not aliens) turned up, which might finally answer the question: where did all the people in charge disappear to? Also, with an external force that isn’t mindlessly wandering around looking for flesh there will be opportunities to raise the more human conflict stakes: the pissing contest to become the alpha male and the quest to draw information from the soldiers will help elevate the drama. There is also the hope that we might get to experience some cross pollination between the sibling shows, with us seeing our heroes from The Walking Dead at the start of their own adventure, and if we’re lucky we may even see the beginnings of The Governor from the brilliant The Rise of The Governor novel.

I’ll stick with Fear The Walking Dead, but more out of dependency than anything else – after all, who else am I going to score from right now? The town is dry until October. 3/5

Check out more in-depth and slightly wayward small-screen analysis in our Television section, including our review of Mr Robot Season 1.

Author:

Ted Wilkes

Date:

2015-09-21

Title:

Fear the Walking Dead: Season 1

Rating:

3