AMC's 'The Walking Dead' debuts

THE WALKING DEAD. 10 p.m. Sunday, AMC.

AMC has become the TV home for tales of a lone man in the midst of personal turmoil, from "Mad Men"'s crisis-challenged Don Draper to "Breaking Bad's" cancer-stricken meth dealer Walter White to "Rubicon's" perma-paranoid Will Travers.

But none of these guys battle zombies.

AMC's newest foray into original programming is "The Walking Dead," based on the Image comic created by Robert Kirkman and Tony Moore. And viewers beware: This is a new breed of horror television.

The pilot begins with Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) trying to fill up his car's gas tank. But as he walks to the pump, the camera pans to reveal a graveyard of automobile bodies, empty makeshift hovels and abandoned children's toys, with no humans in sight. The world is silent save for the crunching of grass beneath Grimes' feet. Then he spies a little blond girl reaching for a worn stuffed animal. When he calls out to her, she turns, only to reveal that she's a zombie.

It's a moment that is somehow both shocking and predictable. Even eschewing knowledge of the source material, any pop culture consumer from the last 50 years knows that Grimes isn't going to come across some towheaded angel in need of assistance. He's much more likely to find a girl with blue-grey skin and no bottom jaw. Yet, the imagery of a girl-zombie trotting toward a full grown man, hungry for some innards with a side of brain, remains jarring thanks in part to "The Walking Dead's" frighteningly good makeup effects team, courtesy of vet Greg Nicotero, and because, well, evil kids are always creepy.

But the shock comes from the scene's violence, and is certainly a harbinger of future episodes. "The Walking Dead" creators have pulled no punches when it comes to graphically depicting the world of the undead, from a flayed corpse to a legless zombie who pulls herself around by her elbows like a Marine in training, yet still yearns for Grimes' fresh flesh.

Frank Darabont, director of "The Shawshank Redemption," took the reins of the pilot episode of "The Walking Dead." He delivers the best parts of horror movie suspense but without the promise of resolution at the show's end. Even if it didn't go well for the non-zombies in George Romero's genre-creating films beginning with "Night of the Living Dead," at least the terror was going to end when the houselights went up. Grimes and, eventually, his crew have no escape. Neither do we.

Before the zombie-creating apocalypse, Grimes was a deputy sheriff in a small Georgia town with a wife and young son. During a car chase gone wrong, Grimes is shot in the chest and put into a coma. He wakes up alone in the hospital after an indeterminate time, all scruffy-cheeked and emaciated, and stumbles through the halls and onto the deserted streets, with his wife and child nowhere to be found.

Grimes finally comes into contact with the living, when he meets Morgan (a heartbreaking Lennie James) and his son Duane (Adrian Kali Turner). Morgan explains that the "walkers," as the zombies are colloquially referred to, are the product of brain fever. Other than that, there's no backstory given as to why humanity is seemingly at this bitter end. The ambiguity is an interesting concept. From Romero, even up to the recent comedy "Zombieland," zombies are assigned simple metaphor, usually the mindlessness of pop culture. But "The Walking Dead" doesn't let its audience off that easily.

Morgan also tells Grimes that there is an outpost of survivors in Atlanta, and Grimes vows to look for his wife and kid. But the scene in ATL isn't much better (nor does it go well for Grimes' equine mode of transportation).

While the will-he-or-won't-he-be-eaten tension lessens in the second episode, the world of characters is expanded via another band of survivors. So Grimes may not be constantly under the threat of zombification, but now he has the foibles of actual people to deal with, including racist Merle Dixon (the always reliable Michael Rooker), and ball-bustin' Andrea (Laurie Holden).

There's a great scene at the end of the second episode in which one of Grimes' new compatriots, Glenn (Steve Yeun), takes a joyride on an abandoned highway, yelping with pure excitement. It's a humanizing moment, one that points to what is hopefully "The Walking Dead's" creed, that among death and pestilence, there's still time to have fun.