TV Pick of the week: The Walking Dead

Off to combat the zombie horde. Photo / Supplied

Zombies, eh? These days they've escaped the movies in which they've been a horror staple since the 60s. Now they're turning up in everything from videogames to Jane Austen novel mash-ups - that's Pride and Prejudice and Zombies - the movie of which is in development.

Yet there have been precious few zombies on television.

But now that vampires have opened the prime-time gore door, here comes The Walking Dead, a series which does for the undead what True Blood did for the fang club.

Well, not quite. The zombies are still your usual slow-walking, mad-staring, hideously disfigured cannibal hordes and the story here is about the human survivors of the apparent apocalypse who are trying not to wind up bitten, or worse, eaten.

It takes place in The South, not the swampy south of Sookie Stackhouse but the New South of Atlanta and the surrounding Georgia countryside.

Based on a popular comic book of the same name, the six-episode first season of the show premiered on Halloween last year on the United States' cable TV channel AMC, which is also home to the acclaimed Mad Men and Breaking Bad.

It's been picked up for a second season stateside after healthy ratings, award nominations and glowing reviews. And that's all despite offering some of the most gross scenes ever seen in a television show. That's established by the opening episode, which starts with the demise of a zombie kid and gets uglier from there, though it still leaves plenty of time to establish its still-human characters.

Principal among them is Sheriff Rick Grimes (played by English actor Andrew Lincoln), who wakes alone in a hospital from a gunshot-wound-induced coma to find the world flipped upside down. Heading outside into a deathly quiet world he realises that his wife and young son are among the missing. He's given a quick education on what he's missed by fellow survivor Morgan (played by another Brit Lennie James, who also starred in the apocalyptic Jericho) who is trying to save his son from the zombies who now prowl the streets.

One of the undead is Morgan's wife and what to do about her isn't the first dilemma the survivors face as they praise the Lord and pass the ammunition. It's unclear just what has caused the zombie outbreak.

But as Sheriff Grimes heads on horseback into downtown Atlanta, where the authorities are meant to have set up a refuge, it's clear that while it's taken zombies a while to gain a putrid foothold in television, they ain't going away any time soon.

When: Wednesday, 9.30pm Where: TV2
What: Braindead telly at its finest

-TimeOut