AMC confirms the end of THE WALKING DEAD

 AMC have announced that The Walking Dead will end in 2022 after airing its 11th season, which will be super-sized as a result, with 24 episodes as opposed to the usual run of 16 episodes.

The Walking Dead began airing in 2010 under the stewardship of Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile). Based on Robert Kirkman's successful comic book series - which ran for 193 issues between 2003 and 2019 - the series follows a band of survivors in the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse, which mostly takes place off-screen. The focal character is Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln), a sheriff who is caught up in the apocalypse along with his family, best friend and some random other survivors. Over the course of the show, the initial band of survivors changes composition many times (until only two actors from Season 1 are still in the regular cast in Season 11) and it evolves from a desperate, isolated band to a group of community-leaders and nation-builders. The zombies, although everpresent, decline as the main threat in favour of other human communities of varying degrees of morality and corruption.

The show quickly became the biggest thing on television for several years, until being displaced by HBO's Game of Thrones. Recent seasons have seen sharp declines in viewing figures and critical appreciation, but with an ending in sight and a climax to build towards (which for various reasons will have to be very different to the ending in the comic book), it'll be interesting to see if the show can win back some sceptical, long-departed fans.

The show's first spin-off series, Fear the Walking Dead, is continuing to air on AMC and a second spin-off, The Walking Dead: World Beyond, set ten years after the apocalypse, is due to launch in the next couple of months. World Beyond is a limited series planned to run for just two seasons. AMC have also confirmed they will be launching a third spin-off, which will follow the adventures of Daryl (Norman Reedus) and Carol (Melissa McBride), the most popular characters from The Walking Dead and the last two Season 1 characters standing. A series of TV movies focusing on Rick Grimes is also in the planning stages.

AMC is also developing Tales of the Walking Dead, an anthology series set in the same universe involving both new and old characters from different points in the series timeline.

The Walking Dead: Season 1

Rick Grimes, a sheriff in a small Georgia town, is shot during an altercation and ends up in a coma. Waking up weeks later, he finds the hospital abandoned and corpses everywhere. He quickly discovers that the country is overrun by the walking dead. Rick sets out to find his missing wife and son, hoping they made it to the promised 'safe zone' in Atlanta, but finds that the city has fallen. But there are other survivors out there...


Based on Robert Kirkman's comics, The Walking Dead is essentially a zombie movie that 'never ends' (or at least will go on much longer than any zombie movie or even series of zombie movies). Frank Darabont, the much-feted director of The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, has applied his writing and directing skills to Kirkman's comic to create something quite impressive.

The Walking Dead's opening episode is bleak and cinematic, with Rick's predicament ably transmitted through Darabont's claustrophobic direction and Andrew Lincoln's superb performance as Rick. Lincoln, a Brit best-known for his comedic role in Teachers, plays Rick's frustration, fear and concern for his missing family to perfection. The first episode, with Rick alone against the zombie hordes, is arguably the best, but the remainder of the short first season, which sees Rick link up with a band of survivors outside Atlanta, is only a notch down in quality.

The rest of the first season concerns itself with the survivors arguing over what to do next and explores the dynamics of the group. Rick's old cop partner Shane has been leading the group, but finds himself supplanted by Rick, which leads to some tension. Two of the other members of the group are racist thugs, setting up tension with the black and Hispanic members of the group, whilst another survivor takes out his frustrations and anger with the situation on his wife. It's not a happy group, and the writers and directors do a good job of exploring the characters and their interactions whilst remembering to bring the zombies on every once in a while to cause mayhem.

Production values are extremely high. The zombie effects are great (a couple of them are obviously fake heads over ordinary people's faces, but these are very rare), up there with the best movies, whilst Atlanta (population 5 million, including the surrounding area) looks convincingly abandoned and bleak. There's a couple of ropey CGI explosions, but beyond that, The Walking Dead looks and feels like a big-budget movie.

The story unfolds at a pretty good pace, though there's a couple of divergences in the second half of the season and a few moments of possible wheel-spinning. However, given that one of the appeals of the story (in both comic and TV form) is that it has the time to show such side-plots and explore the fall of America to a zombie horde in greater detail than a film or novel, that's not an invalid thing to do. By the end of the season there's also a renewed sense of purpose, as the survivors realise that the CDC (Centre for Disease Control) HQ is in Atlanta and may have some of the answers they are looking for. This marks the biggest change from the comics, where the CDC is not mentioned, but as Robert Kirkman (who wrote the fourth episode of the series) points out that's only because he didn't know it was there. If he had, the comics would also have gone there. This sets up a number of interesting possible storylines for Season 2.

Season 1 of The Walking Dead (****½) is a terrific, well-paced and well-acted post-apocalypse series. Let down only by a couple of meandering story threads, it's otherwise a great piece of television. The series is available now in the UK (DVD, Blu-Ray) and USA (DVD, Blu-Ray).