Sci Fi TV Week in Review: Johnny Jay’s irreverent, snarky, and caffeine-fueled look back at the past week in sci fi TV in five minutes or less.
As expected, it has been a slow week for sci fi TV news due to the holiday, so I will be taking a look at what is coming up for the Walking Dead franchise. The main show wrapped up its historic eleven-year run on a bit of a ratings high this past Sunday, but viewership overall has been declining since its seventh season when the Walking Dexit first set in. But as far as AMC is concerned, the franchise is not dead yet, and they have new spin-off shows coming up while Fear the Walking Dead and Tales of the Walking Dead are still lumbering around out there.
First up among the new spin-offs will be The Walking Dead: Dead City which is scheduled to arrive in April 2023 (you can get a first look at the show at this link). That one finds Negan and Maggie teaming up and going off on an adventure in New York City, something that really seems like a stretch seeing as Negan is the guy that bashed in the brains of Maggie’s husband with a baseball bat. Yeah, I know there was some reconciling in the final season of TWD, but this really just seems like an excuse to attract viewers with two of the most popular characters from the main show. Allegedly this is a six-part mini-series, but we will see if they try to stretch it out any further than that.
Next up is the Daryl Dixon show which will premiere at some point in 2023 and will try to keep viewers interested with another of the franchise’s most popular characters. At the end of TWD‘s finale (Spoiler Alert?), Daryl heads off on his motorcycle looking for Rick and Michone who he has learned are still alive from Judith. But somehow he is going to take one heck of a wrong turn because his solo series is set in France. (Do the zombies there growl with an accent?) Originally this was supposed to be the Daryl and Carol series, but Melissa McBride bowed out because the international shooting did not work with her schedule. This has also not been announced as a mini-series, so we will see how long they keep it going, assuming people tune in.
Third on the list is the Rick and Michonne show which was originally supposed to be three television movies. That has now been changed to a six-part mini-series and will catch us up with Rick–last seen being carried off in a helicopter in Season 9–and his post-apocalypse wife who has been searching for him. This is also scheduled for a 2023 premiere, but those movies were in the development queue for years, so don’t be surprised if there are delays.
Fear the Walking Dead is still alive, though it doesn’t seem like anybody is watching that one anymore (Lennie James’ Morgan deserved much better than that show). Its eighth season will premiere probably around Spring 2023, and that could be its last. But then I have been predicting that for the last couple of years, and the show keeps getting renewed. It has more than enough episodes for a syndication run, but perhaps AMC will keep it going to pad out the syndication/streaming package. Whether anybody will keep tuning in remains to be seen.
The anthology series Tales of the Walking Dead premiered this Fall, but it has been the lowest-rated entry in the franchise so far (pulling even lower viewership than the rather dreary The Walking Dead: World Beyond). Tales had a lot of promise, but did not deliver on that in its first season (more on that at this link). A second season has not been announced, and it seems unlikely that AMC would cancel an entry from its flagship franchise, but they may claim it was only intended as a mini-series. Scott Gimple, who oversees the franchise, has claimed even more shows could follow, but he would probably be better off turning Tales into a better anthology and also a try-out show.
In ratings news, CBS supernatural comedy Ghosts remains in the Top 30 broadcast network shows for its Fall 2022 run according to the Scorecard I put up over at CancelledSciFi.com. NBC’s La Brea and Quantum Leap slipped further down in the rankings, though both shows could potentially continue into the 2023-24 season. As for the shows on The CW, Stargirl and The Winchesters are the top-rated genre entries on that network, but the former has been cancelled and the future of the latter is uncertain as new owners continue to reshape the schedule. More on the streaming and linear ratings for sci fi TV shows at CancelledSciFi.com.
Next week will bring the long-awaited premiere of the Willow TV series which will act as a sequel to the 1988 George Lucas fantasy film of the same name. The first two episodes will be available for streaming on Wednesday and the show will release one ep per week after that. You can see the premieres for December and beyond at this link and you can see the Weekly Listings here.
Be sure to keep up with the news during the week with This Week in Sci Fi TV and r/SciFiTV.
SciFiTVSite.com: Follow our Sci Fi TV Schedule for all the currently airing and upcoming sci fi and fantasy television shows, and you can see the premieres for all the upcoming genre entries at this link.
CancelledSciFi.com: Keep up with the status updates of all the currently airing sci fi and fantasy shows with our Cancellation Watch posts. And be sure to follow the Cancelled Sci Fi Twitter Site for breaking news and updates.
