The 10 Best Television Shows Of Summer 2015

9) Fear the Walking Dead

Although hard to fully justify with only one of its scant six hours under its belt, AMC’s not-a-spin-off series of its blockbuster hit The Walking Dead does what any prequel should: make you care about the outcome of events you know are screwed from the get-go. It helps that in this version of the pre-apocalypse we have Kim Dickens (Gone Girl) to lead us through the chaos, not to mention a change of setting from the roaming forests of the southern and eastern coasts – where, if you’re keeping track at home, Rick lies unconscious in a hospital somewhere – into the still-functioning metropolis of Los Angeles.

What makes Fear work so well is a deceptively simple hook: it’s the first act of every disaster movie ever made, spread out over six hours. Full of slow-panning crane shots of Los Angeles’ bustling streets that linger just long enough to make you second guess the normalcy, the show’s first hour introduces a dysfunctionally blended Mexican/American family who get a first-row glimpse of the incoming zombie horde when their junkie son stumbles upon the outbreak while on a bender in skid row.

Tense, ironic, and self-confident, all without being gloomy, Fear the Walking Dead is the perfect palate cleanser to the parent series’ somewhat oppressive bleak streak it’s found itself stuck in the past few seasons.