Last night the AMC Network premiered their much-hyped new series, "The Walking Dead", and despite the fact that it's basically a zombie tale, it works on so many more levels.
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Andrew Lincoln stars as a Southern sheriff who awakens in a hospital bed to find a world turned upside down, namely that almost every human on earth has either died or been turned into a zombie. Yes, we know, the first episode is an almost exact copy of the movie "28 Days Later" with Lincoln in the Cillian Murphy role, but AMC's series seems so much more interesting because Lincoln doesn't cower in the corner, confused and in shock ala Murphy, instead he immediately takes charge of his post-apocalyptic world. In fact, in several press interviews, Lincoln has stated that he tried to channel Gary Cooper from "High Noon", someone left all alone to seek justice and to right wrongs.
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Watching the series last night, we had one of those "where do we know this guy from" moments when Lincoln came on the screen. And then it hit us, he's the guy who carried a secret torch for Keira Knightley in the 2003 movie, "Love Actually". But now he's older, leaner and way sexier than the pudgy, baby-faced boy from seven years ago. Incidentally, in real life, Lincoln is married to Gael Anderson, the daughter of Jethro Tull's lead singer, Ian Anderson.
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AMC is on a roll. They've quickly gone from a "C"-level network which showed "D"-level movies to a network which is cranking out some impressive original series, including its three-time Emmy winner for Best Drama, "Mad Men". Don't get too excited, they still show "D"-level movies, and even worse, with commercials included, but if they keep cranking out series like "Mad Men" and the new "The Walking Dead", then they might just join the elite ranks of the cable networks which are helping to put a nail in the coffins of the major networks' supremacy.
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