To be fair, it’s not only flesh-eaters. Vampires, too, they’re huge right now, part of a kind of second wind for the supernatural–which I’d always hoped for but envisioned more in horror. I wanted more of a return to the risky-creative Hellraisers and Nightmare on Elm Streets of the ’80s, mostly to get away from all of these carbon-copy teen slashers of now. But it seems instead we’re just getting floods of more deadhead horror-comedies, more sexy fanger flicks.

But whatever, as far as television goes, especially network television, this could definitely be cool. AMC has picked up the rights to adapt the hugely popular black & white The Walking Dead comic series, with Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption) writing and directing. It will be a serious action/drama and, beside HBO, there’s really no other network I’d rather see taking on the project.

If this were a movie, I might say who cares. But as a series I’m pretty into it, especially since AMC seems to be on a total tear right now, making a very attainable run to be the premier station on TV for original series right now. From the success they’ve had so far with their intelligent and understated programming, I really don’t see them trying to get by with non-stop action for The Walking Dead, either. At least I hope they won’t. Because I want something awful. This is the end of the world, after all; your family’s just turned into cannibals, your friends are decaying. Give me a zombie story for adults and I promise you, you’ll have me at “Braaaaiiiiiins!”

(hehehe… had to be done)

After 26 episodes, I’m not the only one crazy for this show. It cleaned up at the Emmy awards in both of its two seasons, winning Most Outstanding Drama each time and earning 16 other nominations for Season 2. So don’t take my word for it, but this is the best show on Network TV.

Created by Matt Weiner, a writer/producer for a few of the later seasons of The Sopranos, Mad Men is a meditation on character and the time in which a character lives–in this case, the early 1960s. And it’s all so thoughtful and tragic, everyone, maybe Betty Draper most of all, a beautiful young woman playing house, watching all the light and promise of her youth slowly waste away while she waits at home for her husband to return from work (and, she assumes, affairs), wondering how he’ll treat her when he finally does. And even though they were the center of one my favorite episodes of the entire series last year–episode 8, where Betty finally confronts Don, tearing down every dollhouse illusion of theirs in the process–what I hope to see most of in Season 3 isn’t more of their conflict, but rather an expansion of Pete Campbell’s. As one of the younger execs at Sterling Cooper, a child of both late-’50s and early-’60s sensibility, his was arguably the most consistently interesting dynamic in the show’s first year, but got patchy in year 2 when he’d disappear without explanation for episodes at a time. If that’s the worst I can think to say about Mad Men’s run so far, though, then you know they’re really onto something powerful.

Season 1 and 2 are out now on DVD (Netflix them immediately if you haven’t seen the show).

And Season 3 premiers this Sunday the 16th at 10pm, on AMC.

“This never happend. It will shock you how much this never happened.”
-DD