Signs of life in the Dead yet...
THE WALING DEAD FOX, MONDAY/ON DEMAND
WELL, it came back after its latest mid-season break with the howls of angry disapproval from fans still ringing in its ears.
Could this show ever recapture its glory days? Had it completely lost the plot? Had we all been suckered into a seemingly never ending cul de sac of irrelevance, a la Lost?
Yes, The Walking Dead shambled back on to our screens for the second half of season 8 with one memo from those increasingly impatient fans – must do better.
And did it? Well it killed the insufferable Carl Grimes, which was a start.
Carl had long been the most irritating young character on any show since Wesley Crusher bored everyone off the set of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
We’d seen him bitten by a walker in an earlier episode and so we finally got to see him expire. Slowly.
In fact, I thought he was going to die of old age before he would succumb to zombification. But it turns out they just wanted to give him enough time to make one of his tedious little speeches about everyone loving each other.
It even turned out that the flash-forwards of the previous episodes, which bore a distinctly unwelcome reminder of the aforementioned Lost, were simply part of Carl’s dying vision about a happier time in the future – one where, apparently, the Big Bad of this season, Negen, had somehow joined the group and become some sort of hippy farmer.
The producers were desperate to give Carl one last send off and they certainly did that, even if it seemed to take an eternity.
Still, at least Carol – who has long been the best character on the entire show – is back killing people, Morgan has dropped his Zen approach to everything and decided it would be more rewarding to batter every Saviour he could find. He even came up with a new and dastardly way of killing a wounded enemy, in a scene which certainly filled the gorequota for the episode.
That bodes well for a show which was beginning to show serious signs of decrepitude and now that Carl has finally died, we might get things back on the road again.
I wouldn’t bet on it, but it was a start...
More murders tonight but in a less gory and more, how shall I say it, fabulous way?
The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story (BBC2, tonight, 9pm) is Ryan Murphy’s latest big budget, high-concept extravaganza and anyone who has known and loved his previous works, from the likes of Glee to American Horror Story, will surely be looking forward to this one. An account of the murder of the designer by Andrew Cunanan, this even features Penelope Cruz as Donatella. What’s not to love?