The Scotsman Abroad | Casting Out The Outcasts

It's been a little while since my last contribution to Strange Horizons - well, a couple months - so I'm pleased to report that this week marked my (triumphant?) return to the esteemed reviews section. And you'll be seeing me on the site again shortly, by way of an extensive take on the second Subterranean Tales of Dark Fantasy anthology, published on a date TBD.

For the moment, however, it gives me great pleasure to direct your attentions toward this review of Outcasts, in which I make arguably dubious comparisons between the war on terror and the Beeb's woeful attempts at genre television, and generally speaking tear Britain a bit of a new one. To wit, the introduction:

"Shit having gone suddenly sideways on Earth, a handful of humanity's best and brightest - all British folks, of course - have made a home away from home for themselves on Carpathia, a so-called Goldilocks planet named in honour of the ship which rescued a scant few survivors from the wreckage of the Titanic. It's a neat nod; one that Outcasts, the BBC's recently canned science fiction series, no sooner makes than moves to force down your throat. 

"So it begins."

Needless to say it's a pretty negative piece.

Well, here's to fighting fire with fire, because watching Outcasts was a pretty negative experience for me. Any of you folks seen it yet? Care to share?

TV Review | Spartacus: Gods of the Arena

So. Spartacus, minus Spartacus. How did you think that was going to turn out?

If you answered in the negative, do not pass go, do not collect 200 Monopoly monies. Sit your arse back down and listen, because Gods of the Arena, the six-part prequel miniseries Starz made in lieu of definitive news on the health of rising star Andy Whitfield, is brilliant. How else to put it, other than bloody, fucking brilliant?

And I mean that quite literally. Sex and dismemberment is what Gods of the Arena has to offer, just as Spartacus: Blood and Sand before it. Not exactly a recipe for success by my accounting, and yet... I couldn't look away. Not for a single, solitary second, over six sumptuous and successively more satisfying hours.

Where Blood and Sand took two or three episodes to find its footing, setting up the larger narrative to come and establishing an identity in terms of form and tone, Gods of the Arena explodes onto our television sets fully formed, revelling in the very ingredients which near put me off the first season of Spartacus before it had properly begun. The showrunners know what they're about, now, and it shows. After a recap of Past Transgressions, Gods of the Arena begins exactly where it belongs: right in the shit, with the blood and the dirt, and the top of a gladiator's head, of late divorced sliced off his jaw.

There was a tendency for the violence in last year's Spartacus to come off as cartoonish; related lessons have been learned. Certain supporting characters seemed to bounce around for months without any particular purpose; not so now. Ultimately, however, the greatest failing of Blood and Sand was that it took far too long to penetrate through the gristle to the thick of it. One can only imagine how many viewers turned away from Blood and Sand in fits of impatience, and justifiably so, alas. But gluttons for punishment such as myself, who stuck it out, discovered to our surprise and utter delight a series of gleeful abandon, wherein anything could happen to anyone - short ol' Sparty himself - and indeed, it did.

Last time on Blood and Sand, John Hannah's fabulously filthy Batiatus finally got his, along with his wife Lucrezia, played to perfection by televisual fantasy's own Lucy Lawless, whom it must be practically impossible not to recall as Xena: Warrior Princess. Spartacus led a slave rebellion against the pair of them; them who had captured, oppressed and brutalised him and his gladiatorial kin. Thus they were stabbed rather a lot.

Now I understand Lucy Lawless is set to return for the second season of Spartacus proper, but by necessity, what with the death of her husband - a bitter, twisted, murderous ass of a man, on pitch-perfect form in Gods of the Arena  - much changed, so the notion of another six hours in their inimitable company struck me a gimme. And I'm pleased to report they've never been better... which is to say more awful or conniving or manipulative. The stakes are a little less apocalyptic this time out, what with the end of their story as we understand it written in the indelible ink of their own spilled innards, yet shifting from sterling supporting roles to front and centre of the action and the narrative, Hannah and Lawless, each the other's equal, ascend in Gods of the Arena to the hall of fame of television's best baddies.

Would that we could watch them go at it all over again...

There are other highlights, of course. No short of other lustrous fruits to pluck from this forbidden tree: the growth of the much-changed Manu Bennett as Spartacus' primary rival Crixus, the development of Peter Mensah's Oenomaus, the beginnings of the enmity between good Solonius and bad Batiatus, and the origins of a central character who could share Spartacus' burden in season two, with another actor in Andy Whitfield's place. There's sex and there's death and action and intrigue; as Batiatus and Lucrezia fight a war on two fronts - for a place in the games and a house free of interference - there's politics, Freud and just desserts aplenty. Firstly, however, and foremostly, Gods of the Arena is a rare chance for two of contemporary television's most memorable characters to shine a second time.

Everything in its right place, then. If you can keep it down, and sure enough, some stomachs will suffer at the thought, Spartacus: Gods of the Arena is simply magnificent.

First Impressions | Game of Thrones

Winter... has come.

I'd add to that: and about bloody time, too!


Though the urge has been in overdrive since HBO began promoting the latest addition to their many-studded slate of sophisticated adult dramas, I never did get around to reading any of A Song of Ice and Fire. This despite my quite adoring Fevre Dream and those short stories I cherry-picked from the compendium of all things early George R. R. Martin that is Dreamsongs. This despite my deep-seated fondness for intelligent epic fantasy and all things grim, which I understand now - as I intuited then - the great Game of Thrones indubitably is.


So for me it's been a long road, though not half, nor even a quarter - I'd say somewhere around a sixteenth - as long a road as I'm assured it's been for all those vocal devotees who've hung on every word of every instalment of A Song of Ice and Fire so far. Well, here's hoping this series helps tide those anxious souls over some. For myself, I come to HBO's sumptuous adaptation from a perspective unaffected by any knowledge at all of what's on the horizon, but for the received wisdom that it'll be pretty awesome, probably.


On the strength of this first episode of Game of Thrones alone, then, just this one time, I might be inclined to believe the hype. Tell no-one!

Game of Thrones opens with what appears to be a Wahlberg - though appearances are in this case deceiving - riding through The Wall which divides the South of Westeros from the tortuously frosted North. He and his Night's Watch companions come upon a bleak forest clearing full of dead people, yet the dead seem to have a little life left in 'em still, for they rise up as if they'd never fallen at all and commence beheading the men. The encounter's sole survivor escapes to Winterfell, where he's declaimed as a deserter and a lunatic for his dire rantings about beings thought dead for centures, and decapitated for his trouble.


On the other end of the offending sword, we meet Ned Stark. As Sean Bean. Or perhaps it's the other way around? Let's say that. Certainly, Bean is utterly at home in the role: as the would-be hand man of the King of the Seven Kingdoms he brings grizzled gravitas and a stout-jawed resolve many will remember fondly from The Fellowship of the Ring, while as the powerful patriarch of House Stark he evinces a warmth I hadn't expected - and a coldness, too. His character seems a fascinating one, neatly encapsulated in a couple of this first episode of Game of Thrones' most memorable lines. "The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword," he tells his youngest son after insisting the boy Bran witnesses the aforementioned execution; I would imagine that a fitting mantra for Ned Stark - lifted directly from the novel, perhaps? Later, upon finding a pack of Direwolf cubs huddled around the butchered remains of their mother, he allows to his spread of sons - the bastard Jon Snow and all - the following: "You will train them yourselves, you will feed them yourselves, and if they die, your will bury them yourselves."


Indeed, Westeros feels every bit a world in which the dead - and I would wager there will be many dead when all is said and done - must either resolve to somehow bury their own bodies or be content to decay in the open air. From the chill and forbidding feel of Winterfell alone, where much of this first episode's action occurs, it is too a lavishly realised location: it and its sister continent, Essos across the narrow sea, which with its rugged golden coves and sun-bleached Mediterranean sensibilities appears the polar opposite of Westeros, one bleakly blue-white and the other orange, and earthy. But though in its first 30 seconds alone there is enough stunning fantasy imagery to secure the undying devotion of many a genre fan, Game of Thrones doesn't really seem to be about the sightseeing, for in Essos we're offered an opposing perspective on the struggle for the Iron Throne one imagines will own the day across the narrow sea. Silver-haired siblings Daenerys Targaryen and her banished brother Viserys are all that remains of Westeros' former royal family. Between them they mean to reclaim their rightful place by amassing a vast army, but Essos' forces are a barbarian horde, and the only way into their good graces seems to be by marriage. Thus, Viserys demands Daenerys give herself to Dothraki leader Khal Drogo like a prize pony, and though the prospect does not please her, what other option does she have?

All this and I haven't even mentioned House Lannister - composed of Peter Dinklage as Tyrion, a double-talking dwarf whose "greatest accomplishment" is to be the Queen's brother; the Queen herself, Cersei, to whom Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles' Lena Headey brings the same pained nonchalance she seems to visit upon her every role; the King, of course; and Cersei's brother and lover Jaime, a dirty great meanie by all accounts, however little seen in the first episode of Game of Thrones.


All this and all that and there's more, I gather, and much more still to come. Yet Game of Thrones is not, at the outset, nearly so unwieldy as I'd feared. Pulling double duty as showrunners and head writers, David Benioff and Dan Weiss wisely opt to offer a throughline into this desperately complex world via the Night's Watch man, who passes along the narrative torch to Ned Stark when the latter unceremoniously beheads the former. Only when this hour-long first episode veers too far from Winterfell and the trials ahead of House Stark did I find my interest beginning to slip - and even then David and Dan have the decency to keep such seeming digressions as the incestuous manoeuvring of Cersei and Jaime as brief at this point as the source material will allow.


We're being broken in gently, then. Well thank the heavens for that!


Such restraint means we've had time to align our sympathies just so - though I don't doubt they'll change a great deal in the weeks and months to come. Such focus equates to the natural establishment of certain crucial characters and relationships that could easily have overburdened the narrative's developing momentum. The showrunners clearly have a lot of love for George R. R. Martin's series, and I found that their affection shone through, glinting like a knife in the night even during the darkest moments of this terse introduction to Westeros.

Which isn't to say Game of Thrones is in any way without its share of drawbacks. Headey's lazy imitation worries me already, and though Emilia Clarke does a terrific dazed and confused as Daenerys, there seems precious little dimension to her performance. But perhaps it'll come. I hope so, for hers is a character I am fascinated by already - what with the way she wilfully scalds herself in too hot a bath. The only personage who interests me more is Michelle Fairley's Catelyn Stark, who I dearly hope has more to do in future, for she positively smoulders with tempered frustration in some of her scenes with Sean Bean, while near every other cast member is content to either smirk or sneer.


Then there's the score, which seems dreadfully overbearing during certain key scenes - a relentless racket of dramatic drums that quite ruined a few moments for me - though the theme itself is solid, I'll say that. And oh: and I could do without the contrived cliffhangers in future, thank you very much. The first such - Bran's "fall" from the walls of Winterfell - already strikes me as a cheap way to elevate stakes in no need of elevation.


But we're talking small potatoes, because assuredly Game of Thrones does a great deal with what I'm sure is very little in the grand scheme of things. I was won over in moments - not quite despite myself, for I had been looking forward to this series, but there were no guarantees of quality going in, and coming out, I find myself struggling to restrain my excitement for all that's to come. We'll be looking at a fantasy for the ages here if Game of Thrones continues anything approaching as impressive as it's begun.


Truly, Gods be good that it does.

First Impressions | The Borgias

When it came time for me to pick what subjects I wanted to study in my last years at high school, I plumped for Geography over History. History in my experience had amounted to an interminable series of dates and family trees to memorise, and the hell with that, I thought: I'll learn about glaciation. Something good and practical, you know?

I have a great many regrets in life - don't we all? - and that decision, I'll say, is a way from uppermost amongst them. However I have, in the years since, had cause to wish I'd had the opportunity to study both, because I really do adore a good historical drama, whether in one medium or another, and my education, alas, has left me practically clueless as to the veracity of such narratives.

That's the glass half empty perspective. The glass half full point of view is that I can forgive a vast amount of historical inaccuracy, thanks to my ignorance. I simply don't know any better! And that can come in handy.

To wit: all I knew about The Borgias, before the feature-length pilot episode of Showtime's new series of the same name, was that in last year's Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood I, as Ezio Auditore, stabbed one Juan Borgia in the ugly face and dropped another - namely Cesare - off the battlements of a crumbling castle.

I know a little more now, though I've little doubt what The Borgias has taught me about  the infamous Italian family fathered by Pope Alexander VI - played here by Academy Award-winner Jeremy Irons with arched eyebrows and aplomb - is any more accurate a reflection of true events as the Templar conspiracy theory played out in the last Assassin's Creed. The pay cable station which gave us Dexter and The Tudors are in their infinite wisdom positioning The Borgias as Spartacus meets The Sopranos, and in fairness it's easy to see why: going from the first hour and a half, the presumably much-embellished tale of the rise and fall of "the original crime family" seems equal parts guilty pleasure and storytelling masterstroke. Creator, writer and director Neil Jordan - he of The Crying Game, and of late the lovely Ondine - brings to The Borgias an elegance and a clarity very far from the blood and balls of Spartacus, yet you can sense the potential for sleaze and salaciousness in every narrative margin. Be sure, there will be blood - there has already been blood - not to mention sex, secrets, and all the rest of it.

The pilot episode of The Borgias is essentially a showcase of the series' biggest get in terms of talent, the aforementioned Jeremy Irons. It is his journey in microcosm: from corrupt patriarch to Pope and back again, via a beautiful woman - the lovely Lotte Verbeek as Giulia Farnese - who comes to the Vatican to confess her grave sins, and an attempted poisoning, courtesy of Cadfael himself, Derek Jacobi as Orsino Orsini. Irons, for his part, chews the ornate mise en scene of every tableau he's a part of. One can only hope he continues as central a character to The Borgias as he begins, for daddy Borgia's support is rather less convincing thus far: Joanne Whaley as his suffering wife is no Edie Falco, though I suppose there's time for her yet, and David Oakes - last seen as the villain of The Pillars of the Earth - makes immodest every scene he's in. Meanwhile the jury's still out on newcomer Francois Arnaud as Cesare Borgia. There's certainly potential for the French Canadian to grow into this pivotal role; what he makes of it, or indeed doesn't, remains to be seen.

At that, there's a lot about The Borgias it would be fair to apply the same caveat to. It could very well devolve into a romp, or else ascend to the heights of Rome, if not David Chase's modern mafia masterpiece. All one can speak to at this early stage is the promise of this feature-length first episode, and one imagines - with no small amount of trepidation - that showrunner Neil Jordan is likely to be rather less hands-on going forward. Nevertheless, he gets The Borgias off to a sterling start.

TV Review | Terriers

Thirteen weeks running, Terriers eroded my expectations, teased smile after smile from my grim visage, and finally, irrevocably, broke my heart. Charming, disarming, cute and cunning - like a puppy dog pleading for a second helping of supper - that even on a cable network known for its niche successes it died an obscenely public death in the ratings is nothing less than a goddamn tragedy.


Don't get me wrong, Caprica: you were alright. And The Walking Dead, well, you could do better... but we had a bit of fun, did we not? Whatever the calibre of these recent series, not to mention certain other debuts, speak not their names in the presence of Terriers. The best new show since Justified by a generous margin, alas, at the time of this writing Terriers is dead in the water. Rest assured, however, it'll be ready for you - just as soon as you're ready for it.


Trouble is, too few folks were, when it aired on FX. And I suppose it's easy enough to see why: challenging television has been receding in prominence and popularity since reality arrived to ruin everyone's day. Really, why work for your entertainment - whatever dividends your efforts in that regard might repay - when you can sit back, pop a pill and a TV dinner, and gape at nearly-naked twentysomethings making a tit of themselves?


Huh. I suppose I am bitter, after all...


Well, I've reason to be. Of course, there was another notable issue holding Terriers back from the success I'm here to tell you it deserved, and you folks who were AWOL during this gentle little gem's hour of need, you're less implicated in that: it suffered, there can be no question, because of some dreadfully unhelpful marketing - including but hardly limited to that there poster at the top of this review. Not that it's an inappropriate image it all... in fact it rather captures the tone and indeed several of the subjects of the show we're talking about today, but without having seen Terriers, ask yourself: what exactly does a dog, a beach and two scruffy little dudes tell you?


A bucket and spadeful of nothing, I would wager. With added woof.


Donal Logue and Michael Raymond-James - whose Cajun charm remains the best thing that ever happened to True Blood - give life and such light to Hank and Britt, a pair of unlicensed PIs making ends meet in and around Ocean Beach, the Southern Californian suburb they've called home all their dead-end lives. Hank's a recovering alcoholic, a dishonourably discharged policemen, and very beardy indeed, whereas pretty-boy Britt used to steal shit. Like, all the time. Together, they carve out a scruffy path on the road to reward indeed: helping folks to help themselves. In the first such case we see, the twosome help an old drinking buddy of Hank's locate his lost daughter. And so begins the end.


It's tantamount to incredible, looking back on Terriers, seeing from the very first how everything is connected. For when it begins, it really doesn't seem a show with the grandest of aspirations; some soulful Southern take on Psych, I would have said then, with the trademark FX edge thrown in for consistency's sake. Little did I know. At the heart of Terriers' narrative is a conspiracy that leaves bodies in its wake like a hellish hurricane, and though the details don't come clear till well into the single season's run, the foundations are being sunk all the while. Inch by inch and innocent by innocent.


In the mean, we spend a lot of quality time with Hank and Britt, getting to know them and their circumstances. Hank still loves his ex wife, Gretchen, who's about to remarry, while Britt and his girlfriend Katie are fast approaching a pivotal moment in their relationship. Filler or fan-service in most other shows; in Terriers, no one narrative thread is so throwaway. Every character, every relationship, every conflict gets its moment in the sun: each is treated with such warmth and tenderness and heartfelt, homebrewed humour as to become winning in its own right very easily indeed.


Contrary to the received wisdom, I didn't spend any time at all drumming my thumbs, waiting for the myriad intricacies of Terriers' narrative to be revealed. Before the story even thought to happen, it had me, and that's a credit to creator Ted Griffin, the screenwriter who gave us the rather more bombastic Ocean's Eleven, as well as to writers and executive producers Shawn Ryan and Tim Minear, who brings traits of their particular legacies to Terriers: from The Shield, the slow-burn of characters coming undone, and from Minear's time in the Whedonverse, a sense of continuity, and of humility.


Truly, Terriers is a terrific show, packing such a emotional punch as to leave one winded. A terrific show which completely failed to catch on with the Ritalin-ridden audience which will come to be an embarrassing signature of our era, and I can't pretend to be surprised by that. Would that it could have been otherwise - daring to dream of a future for intelligent television is more of a fool's errand with every dreary season of American Idol - yet there's something to be thankful for: small, but perfectly - perfectly - formed, Terriers seems constructed more like a miniseries than an ongoing affair, say in the vein of State of Play. It begins, and yes, it even ends. Which is all I could have asked.

TV Review | Dexter (Season Five)

My problem with Dexter has never been with Dexter.


In his most prominent role before playing the eponymous anti-hero, Michael C. Hall was quietly commanding as Six Feet Under's put-upon brother, son and lover David Mitchell. Only with woeful rarity was he given the material with which to stand out from the powerhouse ensemble of that dark dramedy - most notably in a certain fourth-season episode those of you who've seen the show will recall all too well.


However, front and centre as Dexter Morgan, blood spatter analyst for the Miami metro division, sometime family man and erstwhile friendly neighbourhood serial killer, Hall has been a revelation. Suave, conflicted, charming, brooding, childlike and cold-blooded, his is a character unlike any other on television today - far less yesterday - and for five seasons now, he has lent Dexter an air of credibility and intelligence without which the series would as like as not be a laughing stock; if indeed it could exist without him.


A big if, that. For without Hall, what do we have here? Courtesy of Jeff Lindsay, from whose Darkly Dreaming Dexter the series initially spun off, count one neat premise: can a man "born in blood" and determined to die in similar circumstances... a man carrying a "dark passenger" addicted to the dealing of death... a man who lies, cheats and deceives those who care for him on a daily basis... can such a man be in any sense redeemed?

Certainly Hall works tirelessly at the task - and for whatever it's worth, you get the feeling the rest of the cast and crew do too. Sadly, the fact of the matter is, but a few of them are up to it. Jennifer Carpenter as Dexter's oblivious sister Deb makes the best of a bad lot; the butt end of some dire storylines in her time, Carpenter has nevertheless stood clear of the crowd. Charismatic, energetic and refreshingly direct, she wears her character like a second skin, so natural is her performance.


And there have been some stand-out supporting players. Last year, John Lithgow as the chilling Trinity killer set the bar tremendously high for future guest stars, and to precisely no-one's surprise, Julia Stiles - the reason for the season, if you will - doesn't even come close to reaching it. Her turn as gang-rape survivor and would-be protégé to our serial killing hero Lumen begins badly, ends abruptly, and is in the interim awkward, inconsistent and decidedly inappropriate on occasion.


Except for her sex, the plot thread she participates in is one we've been through  before... as is the relentless detective on Dexter's trail. Remember Doakes, from the first few seasons? Well this year, Quinn - Deb's on-again, off-again fuckbuddy - picks up where the ludicrous sergeant left off, roping in lamentably cartoonish guest star Peter Weller as a disgraced policeman looking to win back his place in the good books with one big bust.


And I'm thinking: again? Really?

After the surprise high of last season, then, not to speak of the shocking events of its finale, season five returns Dexter to its usual form, which is to say a woebegone case of could have been, would have been, should have been; and given the largely misspent dramatic potential inherent in the death of Trinity's final victim, it's harder to reconcile the series' quagmire of issues than usual. Instead of giving Dexter the time and the space to grieve, the showrunners have opted to crowd out his crisis with a retread of tired old narrative tracks. Add to that some obscenely obvious scriptwriting, a-typically awful performances from a supporting cast more suited to made-for-TV melodrama than the difficult themes Dexter means to address, an utter misfire in the form of Julia Stiles, and... well.


I take no pleasure in raking Dexter over the coals; truly, I don't. Somewhere therein there's a superb show clamouring to truly spread its wings - seasons one and four were (all things considered) a testament to that fact. Sadly, as a whole season five only serves to diminish the good that's come before... to back up startled from the bold steps the creators have taken in directions apparently come to nothing. So by all means, watch the wheels spin. Just don't expect them to take you anywhere of note - this year, at least.

TV Review | The Walking Dead (Season One)

Oh well.


But didn't it start strong?


With The Shawshank Redemption director Frank Darabont at the helm, it'd have been stranger, all things considered, if it hadn't have done; if the breakout talent behind one of the greatest films of all time had suddenly gone to ground, particularly given such fertile territory to stake a claim on. Sadly, what begins with a bang - literally, with Andrew Lincoln as Sheriff Rick Grimes separating a pitiable little zombie girl from her skullcap - ends with a fizzle (albeit an explosive one) symbolic of all this show's woefully misspent potential.


But let's not get ahead of ourselves just yet. Wounded in a shoot-out before the outbreak, Rick awakens alone from a coma to find society in utter disarray. But for the rotting, flea-ridden corpses piled one upon the other, the streets are unnervingly empty. Those survivors that there are seem to have gone feral in their desperation - shovel, let me introduce you to face - and the undead responsible for driving them to such depths aren't particularly chipper either. They seem oddly... what? Hungry?

Despairing, Rick goes where I expect we'd all go under such circumstances: he goes home, and though his wife and son are absent, so too are their family albums. Sure against all good reason that they've not been gobbled - what would a zombie want with a collection of sentimental photos, after all? - the county Sheriff puts a bunch of guns in a bag and takes to Atlanta, where the word on the street is some survivors have gathered. Who knows? Maybe there's a family reunion on the cards after all.


Following the events of the comic book by Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard near-enough panel for panel, The Walking Dead begins brilliantly, perfectly replicating some powerful imagery and twisting things for television just so. A superb pilot and a more moderately impressive second episode leave you with the distinct impression that we could be looking at a truly great show, here - certainly with Darabont and Kirkman pulling the strings behind the scenes and an at-times virtuoso performance from Andrew Lincoln, who carries the lightweight narrative handily, all signs point to the positive.

And then... well. Then the milk sours. The moment we've all been waiting for - the pay-off of all the tension and dread established throughout the escapade in Atlanta, the coming together of the various survivors, not to speak of Rick's decidedly unlikely luck - the moment is a nonsense: fudged, awkward and unconvincing. The uneven ensemble cast assembles at last, foregrounding all its myriad flaws. Certainly the strongest link in the great chain of survivors, Rick puts on his conflicted family man hat and sadly recedes from the forefront of the action, the better to attend to a wife who seems to have been rutting in the woods with another guy the second she heard of his death (reports of which have been greatly exaggerated). And ill in conception and execution both - I don't suppose we can hold Darabont accountable for this much, given the similar beats of the source material - the very real threat of the undead fades away to make room for the more traditional dangers of desperate people taking desperate measures in desperate times. Precisely the sort of stuff The Walking Dead needs to be getting right if it's got any hope of remaining engaging in the long term - however much it might diverge from the comic, this show can't very well be about the zombies every week.


Instead, it flounders. The tension so deliberately established in the first few episodes dissipates like so much smoke - and the fire's gone out too, except for a couple of guttering embers here and there amongst the ashes. The creature effects are great, the visuals often tantamount to iconic, and Battlestar Galactica's Bear McCreary offers up a spare yet effective score. As the main man, Andrew Lincoln holds his own even when presented with some truly excruciating scriptwriting and supporting actors whose performances approach the cartoonish, and when the big movers and shakers are involved beyond a yay or a nay in the latter half of the show's short first season, The Walking Dead sparks briefly back to life. Whether or not it can sustain for any length of time remains to be seen, but at this rate, front-loaded and flat thereafter, I'm afraid The Walking Dead is apt to burn out well before its due.


Alas, poor zombies... alas. I had hoped to know you well.