Zombies are doing well just now, rising up from the graves of parody as a hip alternative to vampire-werewolf fever.

There’s never been a lack of zombie films, but now, in the Zombie Renaissance they are becoming good again, spanning genres like never before: in film there was Zombieland; in literature came World War Z, and now, perhaps, TV is to have its turn.

British actor Andrew Lincoln, better known as “that guy who fancied Keira Knightley in Love Actually”,  plays small town average nice guy Sheriff Rick Grimes. Grimes renders himself comatose after getting shot at a crime scene, and winds up in an abandoned hospital populated solely by the walking dead.

Anyone who’s seen 28 Days Later will be crying out rip-off by now, but the original walking dead comic dates from around the same time as the film, so can’t be accused of direct plagiarism. After a few gruesome encounters, including a run-in with a father and son, he sets off to find his wife and child who have holed up at a survivor’s camp.

It’s a big budget affair attached to big names, meaning that someone high up the production food chain is taking a big risk. How many successful shows about zombies have there been?

The Walking Dead is a labour of love, pushed as worthy, good television. It has a silly premise so reacts by being a hard-headed character drama.Admirable, sure, but the ultra serious zombie realism leaves it humourless and pretty dead itself.

Instead of being a horror show it uses a zombie apocalypse to exploit human reactions. Again, admirable and again not totally successful. By being so realistic the characters either end up muted or ridiculous - as in the case of a redneck racist, who makes about twenty offensive remarks before going completely crazy.

The main secondary characters- Rick’s cop buddy Shane, wife Lori and a supporting rag tag bunch of survivors- are all very human, but that means they develop slowly and realistically, which makes them hard to care about in the first few episodes.

This is a shame, because what The Walking Dead is really good at are the zombies themselves, and they are just a little ignored. The first one is a jawless little girl, clutching a teddy bear, as stupid as it sounds, the show pulls it off. When Rick awakes in hospital he finds a locked door with sounds of shuffling behind and grey fingers between the hinges. These are good, solid, subtle zombie moments, and make the undead far more interesting than the living characters. The end of the pilot episode is the most tense sort of cliff hanger, and it’s because of the zombies.

For all its flaws The Walking Dead is still very good, creepy TV. If it had gone the other way and made funny zombies it probably wouldn’t have worked in the long term, and it does have a long term, the second series was confirmed before the first finished airing. This is a meaty drama and ought to be watched.