This is a faithful adaptation of Robert Kirkman's comic book of the same name, about a lawman named Rick who wakes up from a coma to find the world overrun by the living dead. He was shot by some criminals in the opening scene in which his partner was introduced. He stumbles out of the hospital and makes his way home to find his wife and young son gone. He has no idea how long he's been asleep until he meets two other survivors--an African American man and his young son who have been living in a nearby house ever since the mother was bitten and transformed into a zombie. The guy can't bring himself to kill her. Rick wants to go ahead and find a refugee camp the guy tells him about but has to go on his own. He finds a horse, which makes travel easier on the automobile clogged roads, and comes to the city. At first it seems deserted but then he runs into a huge group of them. He falls off the horse, which is immediately attacked and eaten alive, and he narrowly escapes by crawling underneath an army tank and making his way into the open hatch. Yet there's a zombie inside he has to contend with. We also find out that Rick's wife and son are alive and that his wife is now sleeping with his former partner. And from what I remember from the comic this doesn't bode so well for the partner when the two former law men reunite...
The second episode, in which Rick is rescued (sort of) by Greg and is introduced to a group of survivors trapped in a department store, is better. In one of the most gruesome scenes I've ever seen on TV they chop up a zombie and then smear his rotted body parts over them so they can "blend" in with the zombies, since it's established that they hunt by sense of smell. But when it begins to rain, washing off all the grue, the zombies start to notice them and attack. In this same episode Michael Rooker (HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER) portrays a racist redneck who is handcuffed to the roof after he beats the crap out of another survivor for no good reason.
As zombie movies go this is one of the better ones, primarily because of the source material which emphasized the living characters over the dead. The series was just renewed for a second season on AMC.
This is a faithful adaptation of Robert Kirkman's comic book of the same name, about a lawman named Rick who wakes up from a coma to find the world overrun by the living dead. He was shot by some criminals in the opening scene in which his partner was introduced. He stumbles out of the hospital and makes his way home to find his wife and young son gone. He has no idea how long he's been asleep until he meets two other survivors--an African American man and his young son who have been living in a nearby house ever since the mother was bitten and transformed into a zombie. The guy can't bring himself to kill her. Rick wants to go ahead and find a refugee camp the guy tells him about but has to go on his own. He finds a horse, which makes travel easier on the automobile clogged roads, and comes to the city. At first it seems deserted but then he runs into a huge group of them. He falls off the horse, which is immediately attacked and eaten alive, and he narrowly escapes by crawling underneath an army tank and making his way into the open hatch. Yet there's a zombie inside he has to contend with. We also find out that Rick's wife and son are alive and that his wife is now sleeping with his former partner. And from what I remember from the comic this doesn't bode so well for the partner when the two former law men reunite...
