Unlike AMC's The Walking Dead, CBS is gearing up for a dead man walking — or rather, its first foray into zombie-themed programming that is titled (you more or less guessed it) Dead Mann Walking.

Set to be written by Simon Barry, the creator of Continuum, CBS' zombie series will be set in a future still similar to our own, where a former police chief wrongly executed for the murder of his wife doses himself with a drug that brings him back to life as a "second class citizen," to work as a private investigator, all so that he can discover the identity of her true killer.

Based on a 2011 novel of the same name by author Stefan Petrucha, the show seems to be taking the "supernatural beings are second-class citizens" thematic approach previously popularized by shows like Alan Ball's southern Gothic vamp-fest True Blood. While it's never stated that these second-class citizens are indeed zombies, the fact that they're resurrected human beings seems to point to a largely similar walking undead criterion.  

Dead Mann Walking's premise is also decidedly unique from most zombie fare (like the aforementioned The Walking Dead and its AMC spinoff Fear the Walking Dead) in that rather than being hungry, brain-dead, preying monsters, Dead Mann Walking seems to be sticking to the original pretense of Petrucha's book, making the "pulse-challenged population" portrayed more of the hunted rather than the hunter and somewhat akin to iZombie, the CW's refreshing (but not quite similar) take on the zombie genre.

Via: THR

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