The undead began shuffling back to popularity in the early aughts, driven largely by the success of films like “28 Days Later” and the “Dawn of the Dead” remake and leading to the rise of cultural phenomena like “zombie walks.” But the small screen has offered many delights for revenant connoisseurs as well, especially when the success of Netflix’s “The Walking Dead” convinced studio heads there was plenty of appetite for brainy narratives about flesh-eating ghouls.
‘All of Us Are Dead’ (2022–)
Korean series can sometimes lean overlong, and “All of Us are Dead” is no exception. The sprawling series is set primarily in a high school in the fictional Seoul suburb of Hyosan. On-jo (Park Ji-hu) and Cheong-san (Yoon Chan-young) are childhood friends who join a group of surviving students as they first wait for rescue and then try to escape their besieged school after a zombie outbreak.
The consequences of bullying culture are a poignant theme. It “isn’t a show built on jump scares and surprises but instead one of constant dread” that results in a “slow-burn 12-episode odyssey about survival instinct and survivor’s guilt,” said Tori Preston at Pajiba. A second season is set to debut in 2026. (Netflix)
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‘Black Summer’ (2019-2021)
![Black Summer: Season 1 | Official Trailer [HD] | Netflix - YouTube](https://img.youtube.com/vi/tQA1omPJN24/maxresdefault.jpg)
The unappreciated, short-lived “Black Summer” grows from an action-packed, stressful first season to a masterful second installment that includes several of the best stand-alone episodes of television in any genre. The action follows Rose (Jaime King) and her daughter, Anna (Zoe Marlett), as the pair flee a zombie outbreak and then try to make their way to safety amid the collapse of civilization.
As winter descends in season two, Rose and Anna (minus most of the ancillary characters from season one) travel north, running into other groups of survivors. The show’s superior execution “hinges on two things: long one-take sequences and excellent stunt work and choreography,” said Dylan Moses Griffin at Death of Film Criticism. “Black Summer” never found an audience, sadly, and was canceled after two seasons. (Netflix)
‘The Last of Us’ (2023–)
The first season of this video game adaptation is a well-deserved critical and commercial triumph. Years after a zombie apocalypse collapsed human civilization, jaded smuggler Joel (Pedro Pascal) is given a mission by a rebel group, the Fireflies, to transport Ellie (Bella Ramsey) across a U.S. loosely controlled by the military junta Fedra to find a cure for the fungal infection to which she is mysteriously immune.
“The monsters are barely the focus” of a phenomenal series that is ultimately “more of a buddy road trip show than yet another show about a zombie apocalypse,” said Gene Park at The Washington Post. The second season received somewhat more mixed reviews, and a third installment is not anticipated until 2027. (Max)
‘Santa Clarita Diet’ (2017-2019)
When real estate agent Sheila (Drew Barrymore) dies and returns to life as a zombie of sorts, her fellow house-hawking husband, Joel (Timothy Olyphant), and daughter, Abby (Liv Hewson), are forced to navigate the reality that the family matriarch needs to eat people to stay alive. The gimmick in “Santa Clarita Diet” is that, unlike the mindless, shuffling or sprinting revenants in most of the zombie canon, zombie Sheila is “full of energy, sexually supercharged and very, very hungry for human flesh,” said Mike Hale at The New York Times. Buoyed by a “funny premise and appealing performances,” the show succeeded by gleefully subverting the formulas of the suburban comedy.” (Netflix)
‘The Walking Dead’ (2010-2022)
When it became a sprawling “universe” of related (and not very good) shows and spinoffs, “The Walking Dead” lost a lot of what made its first season groundbreaking. But the gripping feature-length pilot alone is a standout piece of zombie cinema. Georgia cop Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) is wounded in a shoot-out and wakes up from a coma to a world destroyed by a zombie outbreak.
Searching for his family, Rick links up with a ragtag group of survivors, including Daryl (Norman Reedus) and Carol (Melissa McBride), who try to find safety and community among the ruins. The six-episode first season is “one of the finest pieces of programming ever produced for television,” said Gerri Mahn at Den of Geek. (Netflix)
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