The world is a scary place right now. While the COVID-19 pandemic isn’t quite the zombie apocalypse, it sure feels like it. The virus is highly communicable, people are hoarding canned food and toilet paper, and individuals avoid the infected like they’re the undead.
Again, COVID-19 isn’t quite the zombie apocalypse. But youarestuck inside and forced to become very familiar with your television set. Remind yourself how good you have it and enjoy the fictional trials and tribulations of those dealing with the “real” undead by perusing our list of the best zombie TV shows available to stream right now.
The Walking Dead
Streaming on Netflix and YouTube TV
Created by:Robert Kirkland, Tony Moore, and Charlie Adlard, based on their comic book.
Cast:Andrew Lincoln, Danai Gurira, Melissa McBride, Norman Reedus, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Ross Marquand, Khary Payton, Ryan Hurst
The gold-standard of zombie TV shows,The Walking Deadhas (so far) sustained ten seasons, two spinoffs (Fear the Walking DeadandThe World Beyond, coming soon) and a handful of upcoming TV movies. The show focuses more on the humans surviving in a world overtaken by zombies, but worry not – there are still tons of zombies in every episode, and lots of impressive zombie deaths.
Fear the Walking Dead
Streaming on Hulu
Created by:Robert Kirkman and Dave Erickson
Cast:Alicia Debnam-Carey, Lennie James, Colman Domingo, Ruben Blades, Garret Dillahunt, Jenna Elfman, Maggie Grace
Fear the Walking Deadis supposed to take place in the first few days of the zombie apocalypse, and it did – at first. Unfortunately, it squandered this opportunity by showing us the first few days, then jumping ahead several weeks, when the army had fenced off neighborhoods and started bombing cities. In its five seasons, it has now caught up withThe Walking Deadin the timeline. The stories themselves are hit and miss, so proceed with caution with this show.
Santa Clarita Diet
Streaming on Netflix
Created by:Victor Fresco
Cast:Drew Barrymore, Timothy Olyphant
Set in picturesque Santa Clarita, California, the Netflix original seriesSanta Clarita Dietfollows a married pair of real estate agents. The wife, seemingly inexplicably, becomes undead, and she must be fed a healthy diet of human flesh to remain undead – as opposed to dead-dead.
Pushing Daisies
Not currently streaming
Created by:Bryan Fuller
Cast:Lee Pace, Anna Friel, Chi McBride, Kristin Chenowith, Swoosie Kurtz
The sweet, family-friendly zombie showPushing Daisiesfollows a pie-maker and his unusual gift: he has the ability to raise the dead with only a touch. If he keeps them alive for more than a minute, someone or something else must die to keep the balance. If he touches them again, they die permanently. The pie-maker teams with a private investigator to bring corpses back to life to solve their murders and collect on reward money. The meat of the show, however, follows the pie-maker as he is reunited with his childhood sweetheart – who has been murdered. He can’t bring himself to kill her permanently.
Created by:Chris Roberson and Mike Allred, based on their comic book
Starring:Rose McIver, Malcolm Goodwin, Rahul Kohli, Robert Buckley, David Anders
Based on the comic book series of the same name,iZombiefollows Liv, a medical resident who is turned into a zombie. She still retains her human side as long as she eats brains on occasion, so she takes a job in a morgue to fulfil her appetites. When she eats brains, she is able to see flashbacks from the deceased’s life, which allows her to help police solve murders. It’s like a less adorable version ofPushing Daisies.
Created by:Karl Schaefer and Craig Engler
Cast:Kellita Smith, DJ Qualls, Keith Allen, Michael Welch, Mario Van Peebles, Henry Rollins
Set several years after the zombie apocalypse,Z Nationfollows Murphy, a Navy prisoner who was given an experimental vaccine that made him (almost) immune to zombie bites. His skin sheds and appears to be dying, but he can apparently control some zombies and doesn’t devolve into mindless flesh-eating. Murphy is the world’s best hope at solving the zombie crisis and he travels with a group of survivors to get to the world’s last known, functional CDC lab.
Black Summer
Created by:Karl Schaefer and John Hyams
Starring:Jaime King and Justin Chu Cary
Set in the same world asZ Nation, but in the first few weeks of the zombie apocalypse, the Netflix original seriesBlack Summerfocuses on a mother and her search for her daughter during the deadliest, most dangerous time in the zombie pandemic.
Created by:Kim Eun-hee and Yang Kyung-il, based on their webcomic
Cast:Ju Ji-hoon, Ryu Seung-ryong, Bae Doo-na, Kim Sang-ho, Kim Sung-kyu, Kim Hye-jun
Based on a webcomic, the Netflix original seriesKingdomis unique in the zombie TV subgenre in that it is set in the 1500s, during Korea’s Joseon period. A “plague” has set across the country, causing the undead to rise and terrorize the kingdom. The king has been stricken with the virus, and the crown prince must save the kingdom – and his father – from both the plague and an attempted coup.
The Returned
Streaming on Amazon Prime
Created by:Fabrice Gobert
Starring:Anne Consigny, Frédéric Pierrot, Clotilde Hesme, Céline Sallette, Samir Guesmi, Grégory Gadebois, Guillaume Gouix, Jérôme Kircher
The premise forThe Returnedis chilling. In a small country town, the dead mysteriously come back to life with no knowledge that they were dead or that any time passed. Rather than the dead returning with an appetite for brains, they seem to bring with them strange occurrences: power outages, the sudden depletion of the town’s water supply, and mysterious marks that appear on the bodies of the living and the dead. This French series was remade into an American series that only lasted one season.
Created by:Charlie Brooker
Starring:Jaime Winstone, Andy Nyman, Riz Ahmed, Chizzy Akudolu, Liz May Brice, Warren Brown, Shelley Conn, Beth Cordingly, Adam Deacon, Kevin Eldon, Raj Ghatak, Kathleen McDermott, Davina McCall
What would happen if the zombie apocalypse happened during the filming ofBig Brother, the reality show that locks a dozen strangers in a house, with no knowledge of what is going on in the world? This is the premise ofDead Set, a British mini-series that was filmed in the actualBig Brotherhouse. It is an interesting combination of reality-meets-fiction, as formerBig Brothercast members appear in cameos throughout the five-night event. A Brazilian version of the show, set to be calledReality Z, is currently underway.
