The apocalyptic adventure show The Walking Dead has the same vibe as the much-missed Terry Nation drama Survivors. Except with monsters that eat your brains
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| The original line-up of characters. (Image: AMC) |
'People gotta do
what they gotta do - or they die.'
I've never been
a huge fan of zombie movies, with the exception of 24 Days Later. In
that, the filmmakers made you believe that the shuffling, a-bit-comical creatures
of earlier movies were a genuine threat: snarling, lethal, fast-moving killing
machines. Then there was the sublime Shaun of the Dead, which sent up
the shufflers of old by implying that because of hamster-in-a-wheel commuting,
dead-end jobs and computer games, we were well on the way to becoming zombies
anyway.
America's The
Walking Dead series, based on the comic written by Robert Kirkman
and produced by the impeccable AMC – Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Turn and the
remake of The Prisoner. OK, so nobody's perfect – is a combination of
the two. The old shufflers are back, but the focus is on the survivors and the
struggle they have with retaining their humanity as the world around them
becomes more and more savage. The implication is that if the post-apocalypse
citizens give in to the doctrine of 'survival of the fittest', they're no
better than the zombie plague that's devoured their world. In a handy metaphor
for this, when characters die they're resurrected as the undead.
The premise
isn't exactly an original one, but The Walking Dead is so good I've
avidly watched all of the first three series over the last few weeks. It starts
with sheriff’s deputy Rick Grimes (Brit Andrew Lincoln, doing a highly
convincing US accent) waking up in a hospital in a deserted landscape
(referencing 28 Days Later, which borrowed from Survivors which
borrowed from The Day of the Triffids) and discovering what's happened.
The first series revolves around Rick's quest to find his wife Lori (Sarah
Wayne Callies) and son Carl (Chandler Riggs) and, once he's found them, keep
them alive. It isn't long before he's amassed a surrogate extended family,
including his best friend Shane (Jon Bernthal). This situation has 'it's
complicated' written all over it, as he and Lori became emotionally involved
when they thought Rick was dead.
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| 'D'ya feel lucky, punk?' (Image: AMC) |
From here on,
the similarities and differences with the same initial format as Survivors –
after a devastating global plague, a motley band of miss-matched refugees
search for a home – are fascinating to watch. The 1970s show was famously
ridiculed for presenting a viral outbreak that wiped out the working class and
everyone with regional accents, apart from a hippy who looked like David Essex
and a Welsh tramp. There is more of a balance in The Walking Dead. Characters
like the white trash, and possibly white supremacist, Darryl (the coolly
taciturn Norman Reedus) and his thuggish brother Merle (Michael Rooker, in a
swaggering the-man-you-love-to-hate performance) are centre-stage with Rick and
Shane, rather than just being a grudging concession to change or comic relief.
Although it was
hidden by the English countryside and the sensible outdoor wear of the main
cast, Nation initially had a British Western in mind, with territorial wars
fought on horseback in the shires. Due to that old chestnut 'creative
differences', this idea never really took off in Survivors, but as the
mythical 'Wild West' is ingrained in American popular culture, in The
Walking Dead it's there from the start. Halfway through the first episode
Rick has saddled up, and, in one of the series' most striking images, trots
down a deserted highway towards a zombie-infested Atlanta - complete with
stetson - for all the world like a sheriff come to clean up the town. Someone
even sarcastically tells him that, acknowledging the iconography while neatly
undercutting it.
The idea that a
new, brutal world is like the Old West can be found everywhere in apocalypse
fiction, from The Omega Man to the Mad Max films. However, with
the increased scope for character development that a television series affords,
The Walking Dead makes something fresh out of well-worn clichés. Rather
than looking forward to the next ruck with the 'walkers'/'biters'/'shufflers'
or gun fight, you keep watching because you become so hooked on how the
characters are developing; by the end of the third series, those left alive
from the first are almost unrecognisable. That's the other must-see aspect of
the series: you really don't know who's going to die next. Survivors tried
for the same Russian roulette approach to its cast, but on the whole it was
arbitrary and sometimes annoyingly off-hand. Here, everyone gets a shockingly
effective death scene, made more dramatic because of how much you've become invested
in their progression as a character.
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| Whatever you do, don't trust this man. (Image: AMC) |
Things really
pick up in the third series with the debut of the town of Woodbury run by
another imported British actor, David Morrissey ('The Governor') and when Rick
and his tribe take over an old prison. Without giving too much away, the series
becomes even more metaphorical, setting a harsh institution where decent people
live against an apparently idyllic community built on corruption. It doesn't
sound too subtle when you put it like that - the series is adapted from a
comic, after all - but the scenario is written and performed so well you don't
notice the perhaps over-ripe symbolism. In a major plus, Morrissey is astonishing
as an all too plausible, charming megalomaniac. One of the best moments in the
series is the episode which revolves around the Governor and Rick trying to
broker detente between the two groups. It centres on two great actors talking
and it's totally mesmerising.
I like to think
Terry Nation would have enjoyed the 21st century expression of his ideas. While
the ecological disaster in The Walking Dead is more grand guignol than
the earnest back-to-nature theme of his own series, Nation was also a fan of
American cinema – as his interest in doing an eco-Western showed – and I think
he would have relished the bikers-with-crossbows, sheriff-against-monsters,
wagon-train-under-siege style of AMC's hit show. If the direction and
cinematography aren't as obviously stylish as Mad Men or Breaking
Bad, there's a reason for that. This is a brutal world and, somehow, the
no-frills style makes the horrible things that happen there even more shocking.
If you haven't
already, give The Walking Dead a chance. It really is something to get
your teeth into.
http://www.amctv.com/shows/the-walking-dead
