Walking Dead Livelier Than Ever

TV2 resurrects The Walking Dead tonight at 10.30 only days after its mid-season premiere notched up record ratings in the US.

The Sunday night broadcast opposite the Emmy Awards drew not only the zombie drama its biggest audience but also the AMC network’s: 12.3 million viewers.

It also scored 7.7 million 18-49 year-old viewers, a record for basic cable, and is averaging 6.8 million adults in the demo, “outperforming everything including The Big Bang Theory, Modern Family and NCIS in the measure”.

All of which means TV2 may be ruing it bumped The Walking Dead from 9.30 to 10.30 after airing its first season months later than in the US.

At least the network recognises its pop culture status by screening the latest episodes so soon after the US.

They pick up from where the last episode left off but with less splatter than you might expect.

“The cliffhanger suggested the non-stop tension of the fall episodes would continue when we returned, but instead, The Suicide King offered five or so minutes of action and then a whole lot of talking,” critic Alan Sepinwall said.

While Forbes magazine argues it continues “the decline of season three“, The Toronto Star reckons it “sets things up nicely for the remaining eight” to be “a real game-changing doozy“.

The show’s already been renewed for a fourth season, with the premiere likely to be around Halloween, and there’s even talk of a Walking Dead movie.