Through the end of October, Max is home to a collection of shows from AMC+, the main streaming arm of AMC Networks. The arrangement, which reportedly doesn’t involve any monetary transaction between the streamers, is an intriguing gambit for both parties: Max gets some new genre shows on its platform during spooky season, while AMC’s programming will reach a much wider audience. (If you’re a Max subscriber, carve out some time for Anne Rice’s Interview With the Vampire, Dark Winds, and Gangs of London.) But the fact that AMC is willing to make this deal with a competitor in the first place underlines the existential crisis the company faces during the streaming era.
The Ringer’s Streaming Guide
There’s a lot of TV out there. We want to help: Every week, we’ll tell you the best and most urgent shows to stream so you can stay on top of the ever-expanding heap of Peak TV.
Over the past 15-plus years, AMC has been one of traditional cable’s finest destinations for prestige television: Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Halt and Catch Fire, and Better Call Saul form one hell of a Mount Rushmore. But as more and more people abandon cable subscriptions for streaming services, AMC has been left in the lurch. While its closest cable analogue, FX Networks, can keep doing its thing under the Disney umbrella—particularly on Hulu—AMC must maintain profitability with its own streaming services. (In addition to AMC+, AMC has streamers that cater to niche crowds, including the horror-centric Shudder and Acorn, which specializes in British dramas.) Unfortunately, AMC has struggled to generate enough money as a streaming entity, which led to the layoff of 20 percent of the company’s workforce last year. “It was our belief that cord cutting losses would be offset by gains in streaming,” then-AMC chairman James Dolan (yes, that James Dolan) wrote in a memo to employees. “This has not been the case.”
To make matters worse, AMC doesn’t even own some of its greatest hits: Mad Men comes from Lionsgate Television, while the Breaking Bad universe is owned by Sony Pictures Television. This helps explain AMC’s decision to go all in on Anne Rice adaptations after acquiring the rights to an expansive collection of the author’s works and why, true to its name, The Walking Dead is still standing. While the flagship Walking Dead series finally concluded last year after 11 seasons and 177(!) episodes, the franchise keeps spreading like a contagion. In all, five Walking Dead spinoffs have already aired, and at least two more are on the way. The latest of these series, The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon, concluded its six-episode first season on Sunday night. Norman Reedus reprises his role as fan-favorite Daryl Dixon, and the show is perhaps The Walking Dead’s best chance at maintaining relevance in the years to come. But even though Daryl Dixon is far and away the most watchable Walking Dead spinoff released so far, it’s hard to shake the feeling that we’ve seen it all before.
Daryl Dixon opens with its title character washed ashore in France, a conundrum that goes unexplained until the penultimate episode. The reveal is a tad underwhelming, but the why isn’t all that important: In what amounts to a major shake-up for the franchise, this is the first Walking Dead show that’s set overseas. (The series, in turn, was filmed on location in France.) Not long after wandering inland and getting into a tussle with a local paramilitary group, Daryl is welcomed into an abbey that’s home to a small group of nuns and a young boy, Laurent (Louis Puech Scigliuzzi), whose birth at the dawn of the zombie outbreak was deemed a miracle. One of the nuns, Isabelle (an excellent Clémence Poésy), wants Daryl to escort Laurent to a community called the Nest, where he would be groomed as a leader. If Daryl holds up his end of the bargain, Isabelle will help him secure passage back to the United States.
You can see where this is going: a terse, grizzled loner accompanying a child of destiny across an apocalyptic wasteland in which the characters inevitably form a bond? The Last of Us vibes are inescapable, and this doesn’t flatter Daryl Dixon—especially since Laurent would be worthy of a high seeding if The Ringer updated its Annoying TV Kid Bracket. (That said: Laurent’s glorious locks ought to be insured by L’Oréal.) But Daryl Dixon’s real issue is one that will continue to persist with every Walking Dead spinoff: There are only so many ways to shake up the zombie formula. Once again, the biggest threat to the characters isn’t the undead, but other people; likewise, just as some postapocalyptic communities strive to help those in need, others use disorder to set up an authoritarian regime. Daryl Dixon’s most novel touch is a series of flashbacks showing Isabelle’s experience at the start of the outbreak in Paris: a terrifying reminder of just how quickly society descended into chaos.
/Gallery?file=Daryl_Dixon_1x01_Laurent_and_Daryl.jpg){kind=link}
Despite some familiar drawbacks, there’s still plenty to admire about Daryl Dixon: Reedus is in fine form, having long perfected the character’s endearing mix of gruffness and quiet sensitivity. What’s more, the franchise’s change of scenery proves to be a real asset—France has seen better days, but even in the midst of a zombie apocalypse, places like Mont-Saint-Michel remain top-tier travel porn. And since Daryl Dixon was handed an early renewal over the summer, there’s no need to fret over the finale’s cliff-hanger, in which Daryl is torn between staying in France or returning home. (Given how much the first season leaned into Daryl’s relationships with Laurent and Isabelle, one has to assume he’ll be extending his stay abroad.)
AMC has touted Daryl Dixon’s first season as the most-viewed in the history of AMC+, so it has to go down as a much-needed win for the company. But the show’s early success isn’t necessarily replicable with other Walking Dead projects: If casual fans will dip back into this world, it’ll be for the character that earned the slogan, “If Daryl dies, we riot.” And while critical acclaim isn’t the be-all and end-all for AMC, milking every last drop of a franchise that peaked during the Obama administration won’t do the network much good in the long run. Once upon a time, shows like Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and, yes, The Walking Dead arrived as unproven commodities—hell, Breaking Bad didn’t really take off until people began catching up with it on Netflix. (If only the tragically short-lived dramedy Lodge 49 was given more time to find a bigger audience.) AMC will have a hard time creating the next Walking Dead if it’s funneling most of its resources into, well, The Walking Dead.
As a fan of high-quality genre TV, it’s a shame that AMC has been among the biggest casualties of the streaming era, particularly when promising shows can live or die depending on how they’re released. (See: You barely made a ripple on cable via Lifetime before blowing up on Netflix.) One would hope that AMC can figure out how to become a profitable streaming business without sacrificing what makes some of its programming so great—even if it means temporarily putting its content on a competitor’s platform. But if doubling down on aging franchises continues to be the company’s main priority, AMC will remain zombified in more ways than one.
