The Walking Dead: Every Season 1 Episode Ranked Worst To Best
1. Days Gone By
In the end, though, the best episode of The Walking Dead's first season comes at the very beginning, when police officer and family man Rick Grimes wakes up from a coma to find the world has ended and his family is lost to a world infested with the undead.
Attempting with painfully little hope to find his wife and son, Rick meets up with fellow survivor Morgan Jones, and learns the ins-and-outs of the world as it now stands.
Directed methodically by the great Frank Darabont and opening with one of TV's most shocking first scenes, Days Gone By is a tension-riddled slow-burn which is as bleak as it is innovative, and as daring as it is powerfully performed by central stars Andrew Lincoln and Lennie James.
Some argue even today that this is where the show peaked, but the truth is that Days Gone By was only the first in a long line of great episodes, and whilst it set the gold standard for what The Walking Dead could - and would - achieve, it was really only the beginning...