7 TV Shows That Went From Must-See To Completely Forgettable

A few years ago, it seemed that the Walking Dead held an equal footing with Game of Thrones in terms of how ubiquitous it had become in popular culture. Now, AMC’s zombie horror has recently ended a ninth series that you’d be forgiven for not even knowing the existence of. An average of 4.95 million viewers watched each episode, down almost half from season eight’s 7.82 million, which was itself almost half of the series height of 14.38 million.

Where did it all go wrong for Rick Grimes and his ever-changing group of survivors, particularly given that AMC have not yet caught up to the ongoing source material and are still adapting existing stories? People caught on to how predictable it became. Each season the cast would find a new seemingly idyllic location and meet some new faces, only for a new threat to enter the picture, cause a handful of deaths and warrant the move to somewhere else. The zombies even seemed to become an afterthought over time, remembered only when they were needed to provide an easy threat.

From the farm to the prison to Alexandria. From Shane to the Governor to the cannibals to the Saviors. Nothing ever changed. The final straw for most seemed to be how dull the build-up to the confrontation with the initially exciting Negan was.

Now sans Andrew Lincoln and Lauren Cohan, The Walking Dead trundles on, but how many more of its remaining diehards will it haemorrhage before the plug is pulled?