No. 8. The Walking Dead: AMC's Cash Machine Takes Artistic Risks
If we’re using numbers, and especially dollars, to keep score, there’s no question what’s the top show on television. The AMC hit continues to draw mind-boggling ratings that challenge NFL games, and even more enviable demographics that skew young and male.
More impressive, TWD has kept its core audience while expanding its reach with a successful spinoff: Fear the Walking Dead, and television’s top sleeper hit: Talking Dead, in which nerd-next-door Chris Hardwick helps us decompress with an hour-long post-mortem while drawing Nielsen numbers that would make almost any other showrunner jealous.
But that’s just business. What makes The Walking Dead more than just a dollars and cents story is that showrunner Scott Gimple has used the freedom that comes with success to take real chances with his storytelling.
When he took over, the once-conventional series began playing with time and space. And even as the number of original characters dwindles, Gimple continues to kill off fan favorites like (Minor spoiler alert) Chad Coleman’s Tyreese simply because he can. These trends came to a head (Major spoiler alert) midway through the season with Glenn (Stephen Yeun) seemingly being the latest appetizer for the walkers, until...
Was this truly a Jump the Shark moment for the biggest show on television, or nothing more than a little bit of well-earned fun that will be forgotten as we come to grips with TWD’s next big bad, Negan in 2016? Tune in to the next highly-rated block of episodes to find out.
7) Narcos: Goodfellas Meets Jane Goodall
