9) Fear the Walking Dead
Although hard to fully justify with only one of its scant six hours under its belt, AMC’s not-a-spin-off series of its blockbuster hit The Walking Dead does what any prequel should: make you care about the outcome of events you know are screwed from the get-go. It helps that in this version of the pre-apocalypse we have Kim Dickens (Gone Girl) to lead us through the chaos, not to mention a change of setting from the roaming forests of the southern and eastern coasts – where, if you’re keeping track at home, Rick lies unconscious in a hospital somewhere – into the still-functioning metropolis of Los Angeles.
What makes Fear work so well is a deceptively simple hook: it’s the first act of every disaster movie ever made, spread out over six hours. Full of slow-panning crane shots of Los Angeles’ bustling streets that linger just long enough to make you second guess the normalcy, the show’s first hour introduces a dysfunctionally blended Mexican/American family who get a first-row glimpse of the incoming zombie horde when their junkie son stumbles upon the outbreak while on a bender in skid row.
Tense, ironic, and self-confident, all without being gloomy, Fear the Walking Dead is the perfect palate cleanser to the parent series’ somewhat oppressive bleak streak it’s found itself stuck in the past few seasons.