Zombie drama 'Walking Dead' infuses horror with humanity

If you haven't been watching “The Walking Dead,” you missed a top contender a few weeks back for the most deliciously gross scene in television history.

In a desperate ploy to escape the zombies crowding downtown Atlanta, Sheriff Rick Grimes decided to fool them with a deathly masquerade. He found a zombie carcass and chopped it up, then smeared goopy remains on his clothing. But Rick, a man of conscience, first took a moment to mourn the guy this monster used to be.

Rick's fellow refugee, Glenn, who used to deliver pizza, was aghast at Rick's plan.

“If bad ideas were an Olympic event,” said Glenn, “this would take the gold.”

But the ruse worked until a sudden rainstorm outed Rick and Glenn by rinsing off their gutsy disguise.

By turns macabre, suspenseful, poignant and horribly funny, “The Walking Dead” is TV in a class by itself. So maybe it's no wonder that this AMC drama was an instant hit with its premiere Halloween night, drawing more than 5.3 million viewers, followed the next week by an audience nearly as large.

(The six-episode series, already given a green light for a second season, continues to air Sundays at 9 p.m.)

Based on the popular comic book of the same name, “The Walking Dead” depicts the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse confronted by a tattered group of survivors just outside Atlanta. Principal among them is Rick (played by Andrew Lincoln), who, in the series premiere, woke alone in a hospital from a gunshot-wound-induced coma to find the world flipped upside down. His wife and young son are among the missing.

Now Rick and a band of other humans who survived the invasion must defend themselves against these so-called walkers, creatures always hungry for something like a human to feed on.

Happily, “The Walking Dead” not only defies horror-movie cliches, but also charts its own course in dramatizing a hideous plague and a shattered society.

As one counterintuitive twist, this series must be one of the quietest TV shows on record. Long, meditative stretches target characters trying to make sense of what's befallen them in such a soundless fashion you may think your TV is on the fritz. Even the zombies, unless provoked, don't make much racket mostly plaintive hisses and whimperings that can make you ache for them as much as recoil.

“I'm sorry this happened to you,” Rick said to one of them, a wretch whose lower half was gone, as she dragged her ruined torso across the ground with gnarled arms. Rick's single shot put her out of her misery. But there are always more.

The series is beautifully styled and photographed, whether in the ravaged bleakness of downtown Atlanta, which has fallen to the zombies, or the piney-woods retreat, where a number of survivors are hiding out.

Besides Andrew Lincoln, the cast of “The Walking Dead” includes Jon Bernthal, Sarah Wayne Callies, Laurie Holden, Jeffrey DeMunn, Emma Bell, Chandler Riggs and Steven Yeun (“The Big Bang Theory”) as Glenn.

It takes its place as AMC's fourth original drama series, joining established hits “Mad Men” and “Breaking Bad.” “Rubicon” recently concluded its first season, and won't be brought back for a second.

The not-so-common denominator among AMC's portfolio of series continues to hold true with this latest entry: They're all splendid, strikingly distinctive from one another, and full of surprises.

One big surprise for viewers who thought they knew the zombie-film genre: an across-the-board humanity resonating in “Walking Dead.”

“There are sequences where zombies are actually humanized,” notes Joel Stillerman, AMC's head of original programming. “The series has an empathetic point of view that isn't just about the survivors, but about the zombies, too.

“Transcending gore for gore's sake was very important to us,” he says.

Adds AMC president Charlie Collier, “It's a character drama about survival, where the characters are faced with decisions of ‘What would you do, given this adversity? Who would you be? Would you stay or go? Lead or follow?' These are universal themes.”

Consider any blood and guts a fringe benefit.

<p><b>“The Walking Dead”</b></p>

<p>Airs 9 p.m. Sundays on AMC</p>