I have been watching zombie movies nearly all of my life, but only recently have I picked up on some of the popular zombie TV shows around. From my personal experience, I prefer TV shows centred around zombies as opposed to movies. Here’s a few reasons why.
1. More detail can be included
When we consider a TV show based on zombies, Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead comes to mind. The Walking Dead is a TV series that follows a group of individuals trying to make life work after a zombie apocalypse.
It differs from classic zombie movies by adding more depth to the characters and plotlines. The show is presented in 60-minute segments which are aired every week. This format allows the show to explore far more depth and substance behind a real-life zombie scenario.
In the time that it has been on air, The Walking Dead has detailed and explored cult phenomena, sexism, racism and sexual infidelity. It is able to do this as each plot point can be introduced, explored and resolved over the course of a number of episodes, which gives The Walking Dead the ability to stay relevant long after the credits have rolled, and spark debates revolving around the main talking points until the next episode either confirms, or denies audience beliefs and conclusions, this happened most notably with both the Negan introduction and the Did Glenn Die episode.
2. Characters can be more than a name
Nerdist
We all know the feeling. We sit through the runtime of a movie, develop a pseudo-bond with a character and the movie ends before we can explore the depth of that particular person. This restriction in character exploration occurs due to limited run-time. TV shows do not suffer the same fate.
Using their extended screen-time, TV shows are able to display, explore and resolve situations and ideas more thoroughly. This is something the CW series iZombie, does very well.
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iZombie follows a medical examiner by the name of Olivia ‘Liv’ Moore as she contracts a zombie virus and is forced to live her life as a zombie. iZombie presents the main character as a member of the undead, rather than the seen/unseen hostile presence. It also explores the idea of the personality surviving after the body has stopped functioning, as when Liv eats the brain of a deceased person she displays the most prominent part of their personality, which allows her to aid in the solving of murders.
The show runs for 45 minutes a time and allows Liv, who is played by Australian actress Rose McIver, to showcase different personalities and flesh out multiple characters in a given series. The show may follow Liv and her crime-fighting Breakfast Club team for the most part, however each series also has a central theme which tells a larger story.
The narrative throughout changes and evolves from a terrible dime-store comic book tale to one of a blockbuster series or best-selling graphic novel. I believe that if iZombie was limited to a 120-minute runtime, it would not be as appealing to its audience.
3. You can flip stereotypes and challenge preconceptions
The image of zombies is that of a decomposing shambling corpse, dragging itself around on broken limbs and crying out for that tasty, squishy grey matter. This idea is largely based on the work of godfathers of the genre, Lucio Fulci and George A. Romero.
While also being a purveyor of such stereotypes, George A. Romero also showed his ability to develop and change the zombie image with ‘Bub’ from Day of The Dead (the original one) and with Big Daddy from Land of The Dead.
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He did this by showing that both had the capacity for empathy and ability to relearn how to function in society. This was parodied in Shaun Of the Dead with the now classic scene of zombies being trolley-takers in supermarkets.
Imagine a movie which centred around Bub exclusively and detailed his long journey from military personnel, to mindless zombie, to rehabilitated corpse. There is a great deal not known about Bub and a TV show would be the perfect place to explore his personal life before, during and after the events of Day of The Dead (not the Mena Suvari one, sorry Mena). I wager it would be quite fantastic.
4. Zombies don’t have to mean end of the world
TV Guide
When we envisage a zombie scenario, it is usually litter with burning cars, screaming people and dead bodies but what about if a zombie story wasn’t the end-of-the-world scenario that we know it to be. How could we explore that idea? Perhaps with a show like Santa Clarita Diet.
Santa Clarita Diet is a Netflix original series starring Timothy Olyphant and Drew Barrymore as a married couple whose lives are turned upside down when one of them becomes a walking, talking and functioning zombie whose only hope of not going ‘full Romero’ is to eat the brains of the living, it explores the personality quandary and posits the idea that once we die and come back, our personality is changed drastically.
This idea is an interesting one, not only because of the potential for comedy and entertainment – and it is funny – but also that many studies and real-world observations have shown drastic personality changes in those who have survived a near-death experience or have actually ‘died’ and returned to life.
Whether this is due to the innate idea of an epiphany or actual brain chemistry changes is open entirely to your interpretation. But one thing is for sure it makes for a fantastic show which is allowed to be kooky and odd in a way that movies just aren’t. Allowing it the freedom of a TV series enables it to be a self-referential presentation and comedic social commentary and gives it the ability to be enjoyed without any real commitment to viewing.
5. Zombies also don’t have to mean serious
Stories don’t need to be serious or mature in their themes in order to convey a message or moral: we need only take a look at Dr Seuss to be assured of that. This is something which is often lost on movies as any zombie movie which attempts to be humorous and juvenile while also projecting a mature cautionary tale is usually relegated to the bargain bin of your local supermarket. We generally only see this happen to movies as there is far more commitment to plot and experience when watching a movie as opposed to casually watching a show like Z Nation.
Z Nation is a SyFy original series following a group of survivors of a zombie outbreak. They travel around, kill, steal and help wherever they can, so far so Walking Dead right? However, Z Nation pulls away from The Walking Dead formula by relying heavily on the more camp weirder elements of zombie movies – think Return of The Living Dead.
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The characters in Z Nation are a role-reversal of standard zombie movie tropes with females actually being the centre of the majority of the action. The show offers a number of different zombie types, survivors and various wacky situations – Citizen Z may be one of my favourite all-time characters.
If a movie had the same outlook on zombies as Z Nation it would undoubtedly be a flop at the box office, but in a world that brought us Starz horror series Ash VS Evil Dead and British TV presenter Keith Lemon recreating classic movies on a shoestring budget, really anything can happen.
What do you think? Do you agree with what I have said or better still, do you have other reasons that make TV shows better than movies when tackling the subject of flesh-eating monsters?
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