Review

Hannah has made it to her ex-husband Andrew's house and is surprised by him opening the front door with rifle in hand. She is happy to find her kids, Billy and Jamie, have already arrived at Andrew's house following the car crash and are hale and hearty. Andrew can inform Hannah that the electricity is out and the radio has resorted to the emergency broadcast network. Apparently the zombie outbreak is happening everywhere, though judging from by the sirens in the background society hasn't yet completely broken down.

Andrew clearly had problems with the kids going outside, which leads to some harsh words with Hannah, but hey given the current state of the Nation. We also learn something is wrapped up in a rug in the lounge room, something bleeding, something that has suddenly started moving. Which does beg the question, where the heck is Andrew's new squeeze Judy; she wouldn't happen to be currently rolled up in a carpet would she?

Family Matters takes us from the introduction episode that established situation and characters to setting up the rest of the series. We have our major players, I assume there are no more, the tensions between them have been established and we know the situation they are in and are aware of the dangers. The zombie apocalypse still hasn't completely broken down society and people are still unsure of what they are facing. Nice touch to have an off screen character claim it's terrorists, which it might well be, though my vote still rests with the U.S military research wing. Andrew is clearly aware of the dangers around them and has tooled up accordingly while Hannah is still getting up to speed.

There's a lot of information to be gleaned from the episode about the situation, you need to listen to background noises and the dialogue, but equally I got to say the film makers are reliant on the audience being aware of The Walking Dead universe as quite a lot is being taken for granted. This may present difficulties for people completely unaware of the franchise or hell who have never seen a modern zombie movie, but then again those people are hardly likely to dial into this web series. Just pointing it out friends and neighbours, if you want an introduction to what goes down in this zombie thing all the kids are crazy about then Torn Apart isn't the place to start.

Our web series is now firmly set up, time to move things along and get the zombie on

Strangely I'm going to talk about the end of the episode, and that rolled carpet, prior to looking at the episode as a whole. Excellent finish that promises some shocks in the next episode, certainly has me grinning from ear to ear with the possibilities. But more than this is shows script writer John Esposito is up to speed with the requirements of the zombie genre. Characters need to learn how to deal with the undead and what their thing is. Clearly Andrew is completely unaware that zombies are re-animated dead and is in for a surprise, though it does beg the question as to why he would keep a corpse in his lounge room rather than dragging it into the garage or at least out in the backyard. Guess he might have been interrupt by the Kids arriving or Hannah perhaps?

Family Matters, great pun in the title with multiple interpretations, clocks in at a brisk 2:20 minutes, which for mine wasn't long enough. Perhaps another minute of exposé on the situation would have been appreciated or maybe a few shots of what is going down on the streets. The episode for sure needed another couple of minutes, though it does get where it's going without diverting attention from the central ideas. We simply get what we are given, though I'm just saying it's a couple of potatoes short of a baked dinner.

As expected from an AMC show the production values are top notch with attention to detail and each frame given some TLC, which helps keeping us rocking along with the story. It would have been really easy to throw something at the screen and not worry about the continuity or lighting etc but the crew here are rocking on with making a great web episode series.

I'm having a good time with Torn Apart and am now sitting comfy for the second two thirds of the series. Excellent acting, a great story line, and the Director nailing the requirement of making Hannah a likeable character as we all know things aren't going to end well. It's a strange experience watching a series where you know what is eventually going to happen but the game here is to show how "bicycle girl" came into being. If you have some spare time then get your Walking Dead on, family doesn't matter if you are after a viewing, yes it's that good.