Reviews

The first few episodes made the show seem compelling, but by episode 4, the show started to become less adult focused and more cartoony. The characters seemed to be slowly becoming flat, yet stereotypical and the writing seems to increasingly insult my intelligence with each successive episode. Initially I expected this to be a bit more of an Americanized and more exciting, stylized version of a Professor T. Certainly, casting the charismatic Jesse Martin in this role could more than pull that off. However the supporting characters are exaggerated and the side story arcs feel like time fillers. This is really a shame - I was really excited for this series.

The concept is interesting, but poorly executed. Note that this review is based on viewing only 75% of the 16 total episodes, but so far so bad.

The storyline is presented in a series of vignettes (often obscurely connected to their titles) with successive vignettes presenting earlier timelines...sometimes. But you only realize whether or not it is an earlier timeline well into the new vignette. So the result is constant confusion about a story that little backstory is explained and extremely little dialog is provided - adding further to the confusion.

Moreover, the way humans become zombies seems to have a variable set of rules making it very difficult to anticipate the world as presented: some turn when killed, others turn when simply cut or stabbed, but somehow the main characters can get banged up and seemed to be ok.

The only redeeming quality of this show is watching to see where the story goes and how crazy it gets. Or how ridiculously the actors play the zombie roles.

Bogart brings his usual complex self to this film and his stereotypical swagger. His soliloquy towards the end is a bit heavy on the American "apple pie" idealism. Besides that, the film keeps you interested every bit as much as more modern newspaper investigations (e.g., State of Play, Spotlight). For those who aren't big fans of black & white films, the quality of the contrast, graininess, and focus remains clear and does not detract from the experience.