I can’t believe this is even a thing, really, but in hindsight maybe something like this was inevitable. I do find myself missing the days when zombies used to be scary and possibly threatening, but it seems AMC’s long-running pursuit of neutering the undead menace is now complete: we’ve now got a Walking Dead show with teen heroes. Let that sink in a moment. A teen Walking Dead show.
Which I suppose makes it unsurprising that having tried watching this show (and to be fair, I gave it two episodes when thirty minutes of the first made it clear enough), I’ve hit that ‘abort’ button. This show is frankly abominable: badly acted, terribly scripted and directed, a clusterfuck, to be honest, pardon my language.
It seems to be an attempt, and a rather late one, too, considering that the original show is approaching its eleventh (and apparently final) season, and that its first spin-off, Fear the Walking Dead (how ironic a title is that?) is into its own sixth season, to really establish some kind of endless franchise of The Walking Dead (we’re getting threatened with movies, too).
The characters are one-dimensional, the acting is dire, the premise hysterically non-sensical. Our four teen heroes set off on an odyssey/vacation holiday across zombie-infested wilderness to rescue a father from some (suspected, mind) awful Evil Empire whose representatives are dressed in black (hmm, yes, suspicious), armed with rifles and fly around in helicopters. I mean, four teens, what chance will that Evil Empire have? The zombie menace being no menace at all, I couldn’t believe my eyes when at one point our heroes rest for the night in a Treehouse and the biggest mystery was proving not how they will survive the zombies but what are they eating, who’s doing the cooking and have they got any toilet rolls. More importantly, what’s with the lad persistently taking photos with an old film camera? I mean, a film camera? Where does he send the rolls to be developed, is Jessops or Bonusprint even a thing in the Zombie Apocalypse? And how many batteries does the lad with the Walkman have in his rucksack? Is that Walkman thing even playing music? No, I get it: the camera isn’t really taking any pictures and that Walkman isn’t really playing music. Tres Surprise in episode six.
No, that’s it. I’m out. Bad enough one of the kids looks like he’s auditioning to be the next Dr Who. Yeah, a teen Dr Who and the resultant decline of Western Civilization looks pretty inevitable at this point.
the ghost of 82 
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