The Walking Dead

By Marcus Tabram

Purpose

The Walking Dead is a fictional thriller set in a post apocalyptic earth and therefore the main purpose of the show is to entertain and keep the audience on the edge of their seats. Viewers are supposed to feel emotional for the characters, sad for their losses, happy for their gains and scared for them.

Form and StyleEach episode is 45 minuets long with the occasional 1 hour long episode. The mood of this show is meant to unsettle the audience by putting their favourite characters in dangerous situations and in some cases the character dies. A common theme of the show is how the different people cope with the end of the world. Another theme of the show is how people will take advantage of the lawlessness of the world by attacking other groups of survivors. In fact, after a while the walkers (zombies) weren't the main threat to the characters, it was in fact the other groups of survivors trying to kill them and take what they have.

Content

There are a lot of main characters in The Walking DeadThe central character is Rick Grimes, a cop who was shot and put in a coma. He then wakes up to find out that the world has been taken over by walkers.

Content

Other main characters include; Ricks son Carl, Glenn, Daryl, Carol and several more.

ContentThere have been a few villains in the show as well. The first main one was The Governor, the leader of a group of people who would go out to kill and steal from anyone they meet. Another villain are the people who lived at the settlement Terminus who would put signs around the local area telling people that if anyone arrived in their settlement, they would be cared for and looked after where in fact they were capturing people and using them as food

ContentThe setting of the show changes a lot as the characters rarely stay in one place for a long time, however they did spent some time at Hershel's Farm, a prison and most recently a small town named Alexandria. In this world, everyone is infected so that when they die they will turn into a walker. If they are bitten, they get a fever and die very quickly, turning them into a walker.

Meaning

The Walking Dead is telling us that a lot of people in this world are very selfish and if they had to kill to have an easier survival, they would do so. All this show does is put people in a scenario where they don't have everything given to them and the outcome is that people would kill other people to provide for their family, their friends and for their selves.

Genre

The Walking Dead is a TV thriller that has similar conventions as other products from this group. It does, however innovate the genre with new themes such as the relationships between the various characters.

Target Audience

The Walking Dead is rated 18, is aired at 10PM and features graphic gory content. As a result of this we can see it is aimed at mature audiences such as adults so that they can relate to the protagonist, Rick. We can also tell that it is also aimed at teens because Ricks son Carl is a teen and is used so that teens can relate to him.

FrequencyThe Walking Dead has two half seasons each year from November to December and from February to April. In these times there is an episode every week usually adding up to 16 episodes a season. The show follows directly on from what happened in the previous episode. As a result of this you can really dip in and out and watch the occasional episode because a lot of the characters will be talking about things that happened in a previous episode.