Dead men are walking tall in 'The Walking Dead'

For those not yet conversant in "walkers" and the show they populate, a chunk of the human race (unclear how big a chunk, but it's worldwide) has died from a strange disease, and then come back to life.

Not really "life," per se, but they can move and are hungry for living flesh. A small group of survivors has decamped outside Atlanta, near a quarry. They're on the run from these walking dead.

WHAT SUNDAY'S ABOUT

By the end of last week, our band of the living had finally arrived at the headquarters of the Centers for Disease Control; it's a wildly modernistic structure filled with enough food (and wine) to assuage a battalion of hedonists. But there's a catch. This fort is being held down by a single surviving scientist, Dr. Edwin Jenner (Noah Emmerich), who accidentally incinerated an experiment that might have shed some light on the disease. Jenner keeps company with a sentient computer named Vi, whose voice periodically emerges from the gloom. Like HAL 9000, Vi's soothing tone masks just the slightest bit of malice. At least she doesn't drink the wine.

MY SAY

Improbably - certainly unexpectedly - "The Walking Dead" may be the hottest show on TV. This Sunday's finale could be seen by nearly 7 million viewers, the most ever for anything on AMC by an order of magnitude. Why the success? Certainly the zombies. They're a wonder, these groaning, strutting, stiff-limbed gourmands, with their sightless eyes and sucking wounds. When they bite into human flesh, it sounds like they're ripping into a watermelon. Viewers wince - and then nod in approval. This is how horror on TV should be done. Also, the non-dead cast, whose lives have been hyper-realized by the army of walkers that surrounds them. As good as it was, the Halloween premiere posed a problem - how do you build an entire series around zombies? Easy: Tell the stories of the living.

BOTTOM LINE

A terrific wrap, and do not miss the sequence before opening credits.

GRADE

A