TRAILER: 'The Walking Dead'

AMC have released the first trailer for their six-part zombie series The Walking Dead, which was previously shown at the San Diego Comic-Con this summer. They also confirmed the series will premiere on 31 October (Halloween) in the US. Here in the UK, FX will be airing the series shortly after AMC, and FX's own trailer claims it will begin in November. Hopefully that means we'll only have a day's wait and it will start on 1 November, but who knows...

My reaction to the trailer itself? It certainly looks as slick and epic as the creative team behind it would have you expect (director/writer Frank Darabont, producer Gale Anne Hurd), and it's nice to see Britain's own Andrew Lincoln in the lead. I have high hopes for this show and I don't think it will disappoint. That said, nothing about this trailer screamed originality to me. Maybe it's because the zombie subgenre is so overexposed now, but there weren't any visuals or ideas presented in the trailer that felt particularly fresh. Well, beyond the suggestion there's going to be a tank versus zombie horde sequence.

I haven't read the best-selling graphic novels The Walking Dead is based on, but I hear they're very popular primarily because the characterization is far beyond what you'd expect from the zombie genre, so maybe this show's trump card just can't be communicated in a 4-minute trailer. I certainly hope so, as I love ensemble survival dramas where you really become invested in the characters, so any deaths have impact and resonance.

What do you make of this trailer?