The struggle of former police officer Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln), his wife Lori (Sarah Wayne Callies), his son Carl (Chandler Riggs) and their unlikely group of fellow travellers to survive in the face of a once-impossible nightmare of chaos and deprivation has struck some chord in a national psyche traumatised by a decade of war, corruption, disasters both natural and manmade, and ongoing economic collapse the precariousness, casual violence and basic ugliness of the fantastic zombie world seems for the show’s viewers to be in some important way isomorphic with our own.įor Henry A. Something unusual is happening here, beyond the mere novelty of zombie survival horror on television ( The Walking Dead is the first such series in US television history to make it to air). The show’s 3.8 rating (measuring what per cent of all the nation’s televisions were showing the programme) marks the series as not only more popular than other, more critically acclaimed AMC series like Mad Men (US 2007–) and Breaking Bad (US 2008–) but more popular than many broadcast network series as well – unprecedented, even staggering numbers for basic cable programming. The second-season premiere of AMC’s The Walking Dead (2010–) slaughtered previous ratings records for basic cable in the USA, drawing 7.3 million viewers for the first airing, 11 million total viewers for the night including replays and 4.8 million adults in the so-called ‘demo’, the Adults 18–49 demographic most coveted by advertisers.

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