Zombies just won’t leave audiences alone, but that seems appropriate considering what kind of monster they are. These things just keep rising from the dead, sometimes moving slowly and sometimes being surprisingly fast, all the while seeming interested in killing and/or consuming the living. Sometimes, zombies are brought to life by vague supernatural means, while at other times, a zombie plague is caused by a viral outbreak.

Zombie movies have been around for decades, owing to films like Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead, but seemed to have a resurgence of sorts around the start of the 21st century. By the end of the 2000s and certainly throughout the 2010s (and beyond), zombies ambled over to the world of TV, and popped up with increasing regularity on the small screen. It’s those small-screen zombies that are worth celebrating here, with the following TV shows being some of the best zombie shows ever made, imperfections be damned.

10‘Z Nation’ (2014-2018)

Creators: Karl Schaefer, Craig Engler

Image via Syfy

Lasting five seasons and airing throughout a decade that had no shortage of zombie shows, Z Nation is a flawed but sometimes entertaining series about life in an unusual zombie apocalypse. There’s perhaps a little more hope to it than some other zombie stories, though, with a big part of Z Nation revolving around the preservation of a vaccine that’s stored in the bloodstream of a prisoner.

It’s tonally a little odd, sometimes emphasizing comedy and sometimes drama, particularly when indulging in the popular zombie-adjacent trope of “humans being the real monsters.” Z Nation is also like a good many zombie stories in the sense that it isn’t afraid to bump off significant characters without much warning. A zombie apocalypse would be an understandably hazardous thing to live through, after all.

9‘Fear the Walking Dead’ (2015-2023)

Creators: Robert Kirkman, Dave Erickson

Image via AMC

Lasting almost as many seasons as the show it spun off from, Fear the Walking Dead is arguably the most successful series belonging to what’s now The Walking Dead franchise that isn’t The Walking Dead. It was originally something of a prequel, taking place earlier in the zombie apocalypse than the original show, but it eventually progressed enough to be set at a similar time.

That also meant crossovers were possible between the two shows, which can be fun or gimmicky, depending on what you want out of your zombie media. Fear the Walking Dead had just enough of its own identity in its better seasons to be generally dramatically compelling, though it couldn’t quite sustain itself for all eight seasons (which is long, perhaps overly long, for a spin-off such as this).

8‘In the Flesh’ (2013-2014)

Creator: Dominic Mitchell

Image via BBC

There’s a fun spin put on the zombie apocalypse in In the Flesh, with the show being about the undead trying to re-enter society alongside those who are still living. It’s a premise that can be funny, but not to the same extent as something as gentle as the movie Warm Bodies, for example. There’s still a level of realism and darkness to be found in this show.

It only ran for two seasons, and as a British program, those seasons weren’t exactly long, with a total of nine episodes of In the Flesh in total. That makes it a short but sweet kind of thing, and the length ultimately means that it stays even more fresh and distinctive as a zombie TV show, even beyond having that fairly novel premise.

7‘iZombie’ (2015-2019)

Developers: Rob Thomas, Diane Ruggiero-Wright

Image via CW 

Speaking of interesting and somewhat genre-blending zombie/horror shows, iZombie functions as a dramedy and a crime show, all the while also being about zombies. The main character is a medical resident turned zombie, but she continues to work and finds that eating brains can keep certain zombie traits at bay. Also, eating brains in this universe allows her to access some memories of the people such brains used to belong to.

That puts a bit of a Hannibal-esque spin on things, with a main character who’s able to tap into an unusual source of information to assist in the solving of various crimes. That might all sound a bit silly, but iZombie confidently asserts itself in various genres and mostly makes it work, especially for anyone who likes their zombie shows a bit more humorous.

6‘Dead Set’ (2008)

Creator: Charlie Brooker

Image via E4

Before creating Black Mirror, Charlie Brooker wrote a satirical zombie miniseries called Dead Set. It doesn’t reach the heights of Black Mirror at its best, nor does it sink to the lows of Black Mirror at its worst, maintaining a level of consistency owing to its brevity. Though released in five episodes, watching them all back-to-back while skipping “previously on” segments ensures the whole thing is basically feature-length (a bit over two hours).

Dead Set starts strong, with an interesting hook of a premise that sees the contestants of – and crew members for – Big Brother needing to survive a zombie outbreak. Things become a little more conventional after the first episode, with various characters all trying to survive, but once they’re brought together near the miniseries’ end, things become compelling once more. It’s generally worthwhile, mixing dark humor, bleak cynicism, and some grisly violence to strong effect.

5‘Kingdom’ (2019-2021)

Creator: Kim Eun-hee

Image via Netflix

Thanks to movies like 28 Days Later, Shaun of the Dead, and the remake of Dawn of the Dead, it’s pretty plain to see that zombies were all the rage in various Western horror movies throughout the 2000s. The 2010s, though, at least as far as cinema goes, felt like a particularly strong time for more international zombie movies, including some from South Korea that found worldwide popularity.

And then came some South Korean TV shows about zombies that proved to be breakout successes, including the odd yet fascinating Kingdom. This one differentiates itself from the pack by telling a zombie story set within Feudal Korea – i.e., centuries in the past. Kingdom functions as both a political drama and a show about surviving zombies, and it’s hard to think of many other TV shows – or works of fiction in general – that are comparable.

4‘Santa Clarita Diet’ (2017-2019)

Creator: Victor Fresco

Image via Netflix

Taking place in the titular and (usually) bright and sunny LA suburb of Santa Clarita, Santa Clarita Diet is about a married couple who are both real estate agents, and find their lives upturned when one of them is struck with a mysterious sickness. She then finds herself craving a diet of raw meat, which ends up including human flesh, which makes her something of a high-functioning zombie.

It’s a generally comedic show, albeit with a dark sense of humor that’s paired well with some moments that were genuinely and surprisingly sweet. Santa Clarita Diet did fall victim to that far too pervasive Netflix cancelation curse, getting halted before it could entirely finish on its own terms, but what does exist of it is generally quite good, and it stands as one of the most consistently funny comedic zombie shows out there.

3‘The Walking Dead’ (2010-2022)

Developer: Frank Darabont

Image via AMC

Love it or hate it, or love parts of it while hating other parts, it can’t be denied that The Walking Dead is a culturally significant piece of zombie television; maybe the most significant to date. It was initially developed by Frank Darabont, who wasn’t the showrunner for long, setting something of a precedent when it came to The Walking Dead churning through different lead writers across its mammoth 11-season run.

It’s that length that makes The Walking Dead both very good at times and rather disappointing at other points. Such is the nature of long-runners, though… but with something like The Simpsons, for example, it’s still considered a great sitcom, despite the weaker seasons. The Walking Dead isn’t as great a zombie show as The Simpsons is a sitcom, but based on the strengths of its stronger seasons, it’s worth considering as an exceedingly important piece of zombie media.

2‘All of Us Are Dead’ (2022-)

Creators: Chun Sung-il, Lee Jae-kyoo, Kim Nam-su

Image via Netflix

All of Us Are Dead focuses on a group of high school students doing their best to survive the onset of a zombie outbreak, with the school setting being the thing that distinguishes it the most. Surviving life in high school is arguably tough enough without undead-related shenanigans making the whole thing messier and more vicious, but that’s just the way things go when you’re a character in a TV show about zombies.

It’s a recent show that’s gotten off to a very strong start, but time will inevitably tell whether it can keep the momentum going. A second season of All of Us Are Dead is hotly anticipated in any event, as it’s a show that has a decent amount to say about high school culture in the modern day alongside all the zombie-related thrills and kills one would expect.

1‘The Last of Us’ (2023-)

Creators: Craig Mazin, Neil Druckmann

While there’s a good deal of horror and action to be found in The Last of Us, it probably works most as a genuinely gripping and character-focused drama. It’s also noteworthy for being a very skilled adaptation of the acclaimed video game of the same name, proving faithful to the source material at times while also making some bold creative decisions that largely paid off.

In essence, The Last of Us works fantastically as a video game and is a similarly compelling tale of survival and finding connection in a post-apocalyptic setting plagued by undead and morally questionable survivors alike. It’s in a similar spot to All of Us Are Dead, as far as it being unknown whether further seasons will keep the hot streak going, but the first season of The Last of Us was enough to make it – so far – feel like perhaps the best zombie-related TV show of all time.