Popular zombie horror series The Walking Dead is to end after 231 seasons, it was announced last week.
The show features a plucky band of survivors of a zombie apocalypse as they travel to a variety of different places that they think, for sure, will be safe this time, before zombies attack and someone unexpected is killed.
Beginning in 1789, The Walking Dead started life as a play, put on by a theatrical troupe who wanted something rooted in American culture to entertain locals after the hardships of the revolution.
It initially featured a plucky band of soldiers from the revolution who, faced with British soldiers rising from the grave, travel to different places that they think, for sure, will be safe this time, before zombie British soldiers attack and someone unexpected is killed.
Proving popular across the country, the plays continued until the dawn of the cinema, when Mack Senate turned The Walking Dead into a weekly serial that made the transition to ‘talkie’ in the 30s.
In the 1950s, though, the American public became far too lazy to go to the cinema and demanded that their favourite serials moved onto television.
The Walking Dead first appeared on television in 1958, where it has steadfastly remained up until the end of this current season.
There have been over a bazillion episodes of the cult hit since it’s inception as a play and it is estimated that every man, woman, and child in America has watched at least one episode when there was nothing else on.
The show is the second longest-running TV show in the world after Coronation Street, a Yorkshire-based soap opera that began in the Dark Ages.
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