'The Walking Dead' is back among us

It's not about the zombies.

That's what TV watchers learned last fall as AMC's apocalyptic drama, "The Walking Dead," debuted to massive cable ratings of 5.3 million viewers, far outpacing such award-laden channel-mates as "Mad Men" and "Breaking Bad." The "Dead" first-season finale in December drew the largest age 18-49 audience ever for any drama on basic cable.

That's a mainstream hit in an era when they're increasingly hard to come by. And that makes the Season 2 return of "The Walking Dead," Sunday at 9 p.m. on AMC, one of the TV events of the year. (It follows Season 1's six-episodes repeat 2:30-9 p.m.)

"Storytelling is the secret sauce of it, if you want to know the truth," says AMC's Joel Stillerman, senior vice president of original programming, production and digital content, under whose watch "The Walking Dead" was developed and premiered to stunning success. "I don't think I ever allowed myself to think, man, this could be a true breakout hit," Stillerman admits, not with source material coming from writer Robert Kirkman's same-name comic-book series in the niche graphic-novel genre.

But "The Walking Dead" is "really about our emotional connection to this group of characters and the fascinating exploration of the human condition around the idea of survival," says Stillerman, who compares the concept to TV's "Lost" series, the classic novel "Lord of the Flies," and Cormac McCarthy's "The Road," beloved of Oprah's Book Club.

What's the story?

The story revolves around a core group of less than a dozen people, living near Atlanta, who flee together after the global spread of a plague that kills people with fever, then revives them in zombie form, without human identity or speech, only a hunger for living flesh. Society breaks down, and individuals are left living by their wits, on the road with zombie "herds" in pursuit.

"Our survivors are trying to figure out, how can we create a life in a place where there is no safe haven, how do we re-establish civilization and community, when everything we've taken for granted is gone?" says writer Glen Mazzara, a veteran of such complex character dramas as "The Shield" and "Crash." Mazzara, who hails from Douglaston, serves as Season 2 showrunner, after a parting of the ways between AMC and "Dead" series developer Frank Darabont ("The Shawshank Redemption"), reportedly over budgetary/production differences.

Though this adult series takes pains to create graphically believable zombies, they're "just a device to get them viewers] into an interesting world," Mazzara says, much as "you could boil 'Mad Men' down to a show about advertising." Both shows broadly explore societal upheaval, relationship building/fracturing, and crucial questions of personal identity.

Series lead Rick Grimes (played by Andrew Lincoln, "Love Actually") is a sheriff's deputy, shot in the line of duty, who awakens from a coma to find, along with us, that instinct-only zombies have overrun his Georgia territory. Searching for his wife (Sarah Wayne Callies, "Prison Break") and son (Chandler Riggs), he finds them part of an on-the-run group that includes his conflicted police partner (Jon Bernthal, "The Pacific"), an independent career woman (Laurie Holden, "The Shield"), a rough-hewn outdoorsman (Norman Reedus), a helpful pizza delivery guy (Steven Yeun) and a retired Winnebago driver (Jeffrey DeMunn).

Rick's take-charge attitude upsets the group dynamic, which further shifts in this new season of 13 episodes, when the survivors encounter a small-town family in an isolated farmhouse. (Cast newcomers include Scott Wilson and Pruitt Taylor Vince.)

Raising the tension

If fans fear Darabont's departure could shrink the show's scope, Sunday's season premiere provides both a sprawling highway disaster and a shocking shooting to ratchet up the series' signature tension. But "Dead" also delivers moments of elegance and magic, precisely sculpted by top-line directors like Ernest Dickerson, Clark Johnson and Michelle MacLaren.

"We've tried to do right by his vision of the show," Mazzara says of Darabont. "I've felt like I've been given the keys to a Ferrari, and I'm lucky enough to drive it now."

"The Walking Dead" even gets its own victory lap: "The Talking Dead" premieres Sunday at midnight on AMC (following 10:30 p.m.'s encore), with Nerdist.com's Chris Hardwick hosting a chat about the action. AMC's Stillerman was stunned last season "not just by the amount of people who show up but the engagement of those people" on Twitter, Facebook and other sharing options. "That's kind of an insanely valuable X factor," Stillerman says, "and we don't want to give away that audience after each episode of the show." So viewers get "another half-hour to engage."

Indeed, zombies seem to be this year's vampires in pop-culture trending. Brad Pitt stars in next year's big-screener "World War Z." The video game hit Dead Island is being developed into a movie franchise. MTV has its "Death Valley" comedy-horror series Monday at 11 p.m. There's even an "Aliens to Zombies" fan convention in Hollywood next weekend (featuring Michael Rooker, Merle on "Dead"). And, of course, the promised movie mashup "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies," from "Lars and the Real Girl" director Craig Gillespie.

Sounds funny, right? Which is why "Walking Dead" showrunner Mazzara hastens to remind us, "We are never tongue-in-cheek. Because that would make it feel as if the world [in the show] is not real."

"The Walking Dead" takes its zombies, and its humans, very seriously indeed.