Andrew Lincoln returned to TV in Coldwater, a new series that premiered on ITV on Sept. 14, for the first time since The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live. Leading up to the premiere, Lincoln shared some of the reasoning behind his return to TV and making the show with creator David Ireland.
In the interview with The Times, Lincoln also shared some thoughts on The Walking Dead, the TV landscape, and how The Walking Dead was one of the last shows of its kind that continued to pull big ratings on a cable network in as the streaming era began.
Here's what Lincoln told The Times:
“It was quite interesting being in a [network] TV show like The Walking Dead, which felt like it might have been the last show that was able to generate the numbers that it did. It rode out 12, 13 years of the streamers. I think it’s much, much harder to be noticed now. It’s an oversaturated market. I was a bit reluctant to do this job: I thought, are we going to be able to make the show that I want to make or that I think David deserves to make? And the answer was yes. I couldn’t have wished for a better return to the UK.”
Why Andrew Lincoln is right about The Walking Dead being the last of its kind
The Walking Dead premiered on AMC in 2010. Netflix was around at that point, but streaming had yet to catch on. I remember watching the first few seasons online and not on Netflix, if that makes sense in a less than legal way, because I didn't have access to AMC. I'm also old enough to remember a time when, if you missed an episode of a show or caught on later in the run, you had to wait for DVDs, re-runs, or do your best to find a less than savory stream. I know I'm not alone in watching those early season of The Walking Dead that way.
But, to Lincoln's point, there were a lot of fans tuning in on AMC every Sunday night for new episodes of wild zombie show. During the height of it's run through the 2013-2015, as streaming really began to catch on, The Walking Dead was almost as popular as Sunday Night Football. During the 2013 TV season, The Walking Dead was the fourth-highest rated series behind The Big Bang Theory, NCIS, and Sunday Night Football with an average of more than 18 million weekly viewers, according to TV Guide.
Those are insane numbers for a cable drama. Unfortunately, we don't have good enough metrics with the rise of the streamers to know just how many people are tuning in for TV shows like we used to be able to do, but those numbers are massive.
Ratings fell every season after season 5, but that followed a larger trend of fans cutting the cord, watching delayed, and via streamers like Netflix months or even years after seasons premiered. There were obviously story changes that caused some fans to stop watching, too, of course, but there should be nothing but praise for AMC and The Walking Dead team to create a show that lasted this long.
The series ran for 11 seasons on AMC through the fall of 2022. I don't think we're ever going to see a scripted cable drama of this quality and technical precision ever again, not in the streaming era at least.
While we see broadcast shows like Grey's Anatomy carrying the torch for an earlier age of TV, the current cable shows and streaming shows are often much shorter. Game of Thrones, which I would include in the same boat as The Walking Dead as a pre-streaming series, only ran for eight seasons. Stranger Things, which is probably the biggest US Netflix show comparable to The Walking Dead, is going to end after five seasons.
In terms of scope, TV shows like The Walking Dead just simply don't exist right now. They were making 16-episode seasons every year. The latter seasons had 20-plus episodes in each season. Now, the big streaming shows take at least 18 months between seasons. Some take two or three years between seasons. Not The Walking Dead.
Even in the interview, Lincoln shared the reason he decided to ultimately leave the original series before returning in The Ones Who Live.
"“As I see it I just had a protracted time away. It started at only four and a half months [per year] and then, as the show grew, it turned into eight months. And then I’d have to do press on top of that, so I only spent two and a half months back in the UK."
Why we'll never see a show like The Walking Dead again
I believe Lincoln was also making a point about TV, in general, in his comments. He talked about how difficult it is to create a fanbase now. He even called the TV market "oversaturated." And, he's right! Covering TV shows for a decade, I've seen a huge shift in viewing patterns. Some shows achieve huge heights like Squid Game, Wednesday, and others, but I've been shocked at how many shows pop up on these streaming services to basically no audience at all.
Unless viewing patterns and viewers move back to watching more shows when they air and a shift away from streaming happens, I don't see a show like The Walking Dead ever happening again. There's almost no incentive for Netflix or HBO to keep cranking out new seasons of a show every single year. Subscribers stay subscribed. Everyone makes money while viewers wait for the new season. That's just how it works.
That's how we get a show like Stranger Things taking a decade, basically, to produce five seasons. A pandemic and work stoppage contributed to that, as well, but the norm for these shows is to take 18 months between seasons. It's hard to have a show run for 11 seasons when you take that long between seasons. It would take nearly two decades for that show to air on the streamers.
Most streaming shows are capping out at four to five seasons. Stranger Things is about end later this year after five seasons. The Witcher will end after season 5. The Boys is coming to an end after five seasons (and some spinoffs). There just aren't big, epic action shows like The Walking Dead on TV or streaming right now, and that's a shame.
So, I do believe that Lincoln was correct in his assessment of The Walking Dead's place in the greater TV landscape. While there have been many Walking Dead spinoffs, even those shows just don't have the reach that The Walking Dead did. And, they haven't lasted nearly as long. Fear the Walking Dead did run for eight sesaons, but it was never on that same level as The Walking Dead. The Ones Who Live is a one-season series. Dead City is still going strong, as is Daryl Dixon, which is the middle of its third season currently. But, even that show is going to end after season 4.
There's no doubt The Walking Dead is the last of an extinct art of television.