An exhausted hero alone. A warehouse full of walkers! An injury, a narrow escape. Strangers! Tentative alliance! Treachery! Worse injury, unconsciousness. A silent observer setting up a plotline for later episodes. The hero waking up in a place of sanctuary so we can all catch our breaths for a moment. A true alliance formed. A quest begins.
Does it matter that I could have written this before watching the first episode of The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon just as easily as I did after it? No, it does not. For that is the beauty and the asininity of the Walking Dead franchise. The Dixon spin-off is the latest to arrive on these shores, though it was one of the earlier ones to be produced, thanks to Daryl (Norman Reedus) being such a favourite with the fans, and has been out in the US for more than a year.
Our monosyllabic hero washes up in France, unconscious on an upturned rowing boat. We don’t know how he got there from the Commonwealth (America) until much later. He doesn’t speak French but he does happen across a deceased Irishman’s Dictaphone and tapes that tell him – and us – exactly where he is, some maps that show him where best to go, and a double-ended pikestaff that suits him just as well as his crossbow, so he sets off in search of the main series arc.
Which he finds when he wakes up in the place of sanctuary, which is a nunnery. He is being cared for by a nun, Isabelle (Clémence Poésy), and we get the obligatory shirtless scene as she requires him to take a bath and dresses his wounds with honey and garlic. At this point, anyone with any TWD experience will be wondering if the convent is, in fact, a bastion of cannibalism and their unexpected visitor is being marinaded as a prelude to becoming le plat du jour. But no! He is there to become embroiled in a quest to take Laurent (Louis Puech Scigliuzzi), the orphan boy in their care whom they believe to be the new messiah, to the safety of an outpost called “the Nest” in northern France. Daryl agrees in exchange for help finding a radio and a ship to take him home.
Set pieces are duly encountered – a moat full of walkers here, a terrifying man leading an orchestra of animated corpses in a rendition of Ravel’s Boléro there – obstacles are overcome, a lot of medieval weaponry is deployed, Isabelle’s very un-nun-like backstory is gradually revealed as her friendship and the sexual tension with Daryl build, and wider malevolent forces assemble to cause more trouble. There is Codron (Romain Levi), a tattooed soldier who has been on Daryl’s trail since he killed his fellow soldier and brother during the tentative alliance portion of the inaugural episode. And there is a totalitarian leader called Genet (Anne Charrier), who seems to be experimenting with the undead to what we must assume is no good end and is in search of Laurent (as a potential threat to her reign) and Daryl himself. Part of Daryl’s journey to Gallic shores seems to have involved him wrecking Genet’s ship and much of her research (more news as we get it in the second half of the six-episode run, as only the initial three were available for review).
What’s different here? Well, French walkers are acidic, which comes in useful when you need to burn an escape hole in something, say, in episode two, but is less helpful when they injure you (though it doesn’t mean you turn). There are also occasional jokes! Such as when a character questions why Daryl, pretending to be a Christian missionary who has been in France for years, still doesn’t speak the language, and Isabelle shrugs and explains: “Américain”. If this doesn’t strike you as hysterically funny – my friend, you have not been watching TWD long enough.
More importantly, new protagonist Isabelle feels real and not just another Walking Dead chess piece being moved around the gory board, and her relationship with Daryl feels equally so. It is nice to have something to care about after so long. Don’t talk to me about Michonne and Rick. No woman would really be getting involved with a man who hasn’t cleared his throat since the apocalypse began.
What’s the same? Almost everything else – though Laurent is even more annoying than Carl, which I did not think was humanly or undeadly possible. But as with any franchise, from Subway to Pret, the sameness is the point. Daryl’s branch is as good a place to hang out as any.
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