The quality and audience attention of zombie apocalypse drama The Walking Dead rose and fell over its 11-season tenure like the barbed-wire wrapped baseball bat wielded by one of its most notorious antagonists. From a promising pilot that borrowed heavily in parts from 28 Days Later, through a budget-strapped season set entirely on a Virginia farm, the show gradually found its feet and flourished with engaging characters, memorable villains, and credible world-building of its dystopian future. Also: lots and lots of blood and guts.
In a media landscape where IP is king, the spin-offs began. First the tepid Fear The Walking Dead, then a glut of anthology series and character-specific outings following fan favourites such as Negan and Maggie in New York-based Dead City and Daryl Dixon in his eponymous series that takes him all the way to France. Now, having bowed out two seasons before The Walking Dead ended, it's the turn of former Sheriff Rick Grimes, presumed dead by his community after they saw him seemingly blown up in a moment of self-sacrifice. His final TWD episode teased his real fate to audiences; rescued from near-death by fellow survivor Jadis and ferried away by helicopter to a secret community that categorises people as “A's” or “B's”.
The payoff finally arrives via The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live. This six-hour miniseries sees Rick now part of the community, having finally accepted his place there following numerous escape attempts, one of which cost him his hand. The love of his life, the samurai-sword wielding Michonne hasn't given up hope though, and is on her own quest to find him and bring him home safe to their children. They meet early in the story and spend the remainder trying to find ways to escape.
Set six years on from the events that saw Rick spirited away and presumed dead, the first episodes exist to set the world and catch us up on events. “A's” are natural leaders, those who will die for what they believe in. “B's” are those who do what they are told and just try to survive. A's get killed and B's get accepted. Rick, an A, is pretending to be a B as he rises up the ranks to try to take down the system from within. As with TWD and its multitude of spin-offs, it's a world where there's always zombies lurking around the nearest corner, but the real danger is from other humans.
Lead actors Andrew Lincoln and Danai Gurira both take “created by” and exec producer credits, securing not only inevitable bumps to the pay packet but also greater control over the story. The result, unsurprisingly, means a good amount of the run time is devoted to scenes of the pair together, capitalising on their chemistry and giving them an opportunity to flex their dramatic acting chops amidst the obligatory action scenes, which are equally impressive. The genre may be Zombie Apocalypse but this is really a story of absent lovers moving Heaven and Earth to find each other.
A rushed set of scenes and voiceover speed us through Rick's life over the past years to the present to bring us up to speed. This kind of pacing is a constant issue through the show, such as a period where a year is supposed to pass while characters recover from a chemical attack, with time clumsily marked by the autumn leaves falling on the roof, but there's little real sense of the passage of time. Flashbacks constantly take us out of the present as a means to inform the story, often slowing proceedings to a standstill.
If TWD didn't exist and The Ones Who Live was an entirely new show with new characters, it would land better than it does. This is a love story painted across the backdrop of an action blockbuster, with a style and tone that's (deliberately) apart from its parent show. Even when TWD expanded its world with other communities, it still felt local. The Ones Who Live is clearly a step up in budget as the scale reaches epic levels. There's a fantastic sense of the world in jeopardy with proper armies vying for control instead of the usual small groups squabbling over scraps. New audiences will love it but fans of the old show may struggle to get comfortable.
Ultimately, “Richonne” stans will love the opportunity to spend time with their beloved characters and see them back together. The middle episodes are basically Rick and Michonne talking and reconnecting, with some occasional zombie or human-related action, plus a shockingly obvious piece of product placement. The finale again suffers from pacing as it rushes to conclusion with a climax that invites questions around the believability of certain events (as much as one can question believability in fictional world of zombies – but things still have to make sense). It's an enjoyable six hours that's more of the same, but different – but maybe a little too different.
Special Features
- Show Me More: The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live – a 42 minute “making of”.
- The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live Preview
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live is available now
