Paul Casserly: The real walking dead (+video)

Zombies run rife on The Walking Dead. Photo / Supplied

Death is everywhere. The body count ranges from a single individual on The Killing (Soho, Wednesday, 8.30pm) to thousands on The Walking Dead.

The season finale this week was a brilliantly brutal affair that included the improbable sight of someone wasting a field full of zombies with a shotgun from a Hyundai Santa Fe.

Zombies are great to kill because they deserve to die, like Nazis and possums. Also, they remind you of those shuffling slow-pokes who always appear in front of you in supermarket queues, making enquiries about refunds when you're shockingly hungover.

It's estimated that someone with a tattoo - and suspiciously clean facial hair - kills someone else every 3.5 minutes on Sons of Anarchy (TV3, Thursday, 9.30pm).

On this show you may get shot from a Harley Davidson or even in the boot of your 500SL Mercedes, but one is never shot from a Hyundai.

Any given night the grim reaper stalks the schedule.

After flicking through every channel I came to the conclusion that Food Television (SKY Channel 9) is the only place that is completely free of murder, of shootings or butchery.

Hang on a minute, what's being served up on that sizzling platter?

Come to think of it most of the shows are based around an animal being hung drawn and quarter-pounded.

There is no escape.

Babies are gutted like fish on Game of Thrones and there may even be the rotting corpse of a school-teacher under the floor of Underworld, the undies factory on Coronation Street.

For a taste of actual death I highly recommend the documentary film How To Die In Oregon (Soho, 8.30 Friday April 27).

As Gerry Brownlee was clumsily trying to explain, not everything happens in Norway first.

In 1994, Oregon in the United States became the first state to legalise the practise of assisted suicide. This film shows us exactly how that works and makes a powerful case for the freedom of the patient to call the grim reaper at a time that suits.

It was named best documentary at Sundance and may be the most powerful and most-difficult-to-watch film you see this year.

The primary focus is Cody Curtis, a 54-year-old woman with an aggressive and terminal cancer. You may know what's coming but the experience is both shocking and uplifting.

It's not often that you can sit in front of the TV and be so affected to actually experience that visceral feeling of real life and real death.

Watch the trailer for How to Die In Oregon: