‘The Walking Dead’ Is Like ‘Downton Abbey’: Executive Producer

The Walking Dead, AMC’s rating juggernaut, returns tonight for its highly anticipated season 3 midseason premiere, and executive producer Gale Anne Hurd thinks her show and Downton Abbey, which are on at the same time, have some common threads.

Gale Anne Hurd expressed concern that the zombie opus might have lost some of its audience during its two-month hiatus and that a portion of the viewership might even have migrated to Downton Abbey.

That being said, according to an interview with Deadline Hollywood, Hurd claimed some crossover appeal exists between the two popular series despite their entirely different subject matter and setting:

“You always worry. You always worry that people will find something more compelling to do at 9 PM on a Sunday night. But I hope that instead they’ll be sticking with us. I’m a Downton Abbey fanatic myself so I tend to tune in at Sunday nights at 9 and now I’ll be tuning in to the zombie apocalypse instead of the post-World War I English gentry.

” I like to think that we have a lot of the same type of moral issues and ethic issues that the cast has to deal with — ours is just in a heightened state.”

Both shows feature British actors, obviously. Fans of both shows, assuming there are any aside from Gale Anne Hurd, need only program their DVR, which along with caller ID is one of the world’s greatest inventions, to capture new episodes.

As far as the highly publicized departure of showrunner Glen Mazzara fromThe Walking Dead, Hurd claimed that for example since all the writers are the same and are staying on board, fans won’t see much difference in how the show progresses under Scott Gimple. She also noted that much of season 3 had already been locked down in terms of plot points even before the departure of original showrunner Frank Darabont.

A Walking Dead movie could be a possibility sometime in the future, she added.

Starting tonight, The Walking Dead, which appears to be the most popular basic cable television show ever, has eight more episodes this season. AMC has renewed the show, and season 4 could premiere as early as October.

Do you think The Walking Dead and Downton Abbey have similarities including common fans?