The Walking Dead
FOX, Mondays, 9pm
Fan fury and shock at last week’s season premiere of The Walking Dead has become a thing. The internet is full of outrage from viewers who feel the show has suddenly gone too far; Youtube is replete with videos of real people filming their own stunned and appalled reactions to the events of the episode, and Twitter and Facebook have been flooded with fragile snowflakes claiming they’ll never watch the show again.
Sure, the season seven opener had intensely gory moments, strung out amidst an exhaustingly tense hour of deeply distressing drama. But I love The Walking Dead precisely because of this kind of stuff. This is a show set in a zombie-filled post-apocalyptic world of survival at any cost. What were these so-called fans expecting?
The clue that this episode might be a tad bloody – even by classic TWD standards – came in the series six finale, when newbie villain Negan unveiled his precious wire-wrapped baseball bat and proceeded to wield it over our gaggle of beloved regulars. To expect the results of his psychotic attack to be sanitised in any way was misguided and naïve in the extreme. The Walking Dead is a horror show. Its grainy look and gruesomely nasty tone are inspired by the zombie exploitation films of the ’70s, and this episode was liberally bathed in that kind of terror, as heroic Rick (A ndrew Lincoln) tried to keep his head while his mates were getting theirs bashed in. If that wasn’t enough, he was surrounded by zombies getting their faces blown off ten to the dozen.
Yes, it was down-and-dirty and deeply nasty. Textbook Walking Dead, in other words.