fear-walking-dead-2Entertainment One, out now

Despite a strong end to last year’s Fear The Walking Dead, I was unsure we’d see it again this, but I was pleasantly surprised we did, and more than double in length. But do the extra episodes help or hinder the series considering series 1 seriously changed pace in a complex but slow middle?

Series 2 begins as night falls on the day of the first season’s last episode, as the group try to escape land onto a luxury yacht moored some way off shore. Somehow, the Walkers have breached the security of mysterious benefactor Victor Strand’s beachfront property since we last saw them, and they have a desperate struggle to escape.

It’s difficult not to compare this show to its parent series, and it’s something I find myself doing frequently, considering how strong that has been with the Negan arc. It’s again pretty obvious that the skills and reactions of this group are different to that of our Alexandrians, and it is a much different world they live in.

Unfortunately that’s the main problem. Despite managing both a claustrophobic, contained feel by placing everyone on a boat at the start of the season and allowing the world to look a lot bigger than the one seen in The Walking Dead (at least until recently) with scary vistas of shorelines devastated by fire and attack planes and helicopters swooping overhead – showing us the same world as The Walking Dead from an entirely new perspective – it’s not a show that has the budget for this, so these scenes ultimately fall short. Much more effective is the ominous message that “San Diego is gone, it’s burning.” This works much better.

Finding its own voice is crucial for Fear the Walking Dead, but it’s struggling to get out of the shadow of its parent and there are a few reasons for that. Following the trope of “humans are the walking dead” and “to survive you must be bad” that The Walking Dead uses is also not a good idea, despite some resistance of this from characters such as Kim Dickens’ Madison, all too soon we meet a big gang with an ominous, charismatic leader, but who ultimately fails to be anywhere near as menacing as The Governor or Negan, but whose followers do so for the same reason. This is right at the beginning of the apocalypse – how have people changed so quickly?

The main cast has some fractures in it too. Our main protagonist in season 1 – Frank Dillane’s Nick – is just odd, uneven and ultimately unsatisfying as a character. Despite some fine scenes particularly in season 1, this year he seems to have discovered Rick’s “cover yourself in Walker goo” camouflage very quickly but kinda likes it a little more than he should. He’s a detached, unpredictable character and, although very well played, needs more focus. Alycia Debnam-Carey’s Alicia is just a pest, and, a bit like Madison, needs to really wake up in this world before really bad things happen.

Stand outs are, as last season, Colman Domingo’s Strand who gets a nice back story with a surprise appearance by Dougray Scott, and the ever reliable Cliff Curtis, whose Travis is adapting well to post-apocalypse life. And, of course, Ruben Blades is always good value. Newcomer Michelle Ang is a welcome addition, but the cast needs pruning, particularly of its younger contingency, as they emo and gurn their way to another “it’s so bloody unfair, you don’t understand” life threatening act of rebellion.

All in all though, Fear the Walking Dead does help enhance and expand the mythos of the universe it inhabits – probably more than The Walking Dead does – and it’s a show I really want to like. Ultimately though it must fall into bracket of another gang surviving elsewhere in the world and I wonder whether it might be better served merged with its parent. With a little time hop and a scary cross country journey it’s not outwith the realms of possibility that the best of the characters could end up in Alexandria – or, maybe more interestingly, in the Kingdom, or with the Saviours. Or maybe the Whisperers?

Verdict: I want Fear The Walking Dead to survive, but, like the best of the Star Trek spin offs, it must be its own thing, not just a rehash of what came before it. The characters too need to be likeable or they really have to get their comeuppance, and this is something only beginning to be realised here. Series 3 has a big task. 8/10

Eddie McGuigan

Fear The Walking Dead: The Complete Second Season is available on Blu-ray and DVD now, courtesy of Entertainment One