Written and created by Dominic Mitchell,[1] the show began airing on BBC Three on 17 March 2013 with the first series consisting of three one-hour-long episodes.

Set after "The Rising", which is the show's take on a zombie apocalypse, the drama focuses on reanimated young man, Kieren Walker, and his return to his local community.

[6] The show, set in the fictional village of Roarton, Lancashire, though filmed in Marsden, West Yorkshire,[7] depicts life several years after "The Rising".

Meanwhile, a scientific solution for the zombie phenomenon has been found, with the development of a medication to restore consciousness to the undead, allowing them to remember their time alive and who they once were.

The surviving undead, not killed by the militias, have been rounded up, forcibly medicated, and entered in a government rehabilitation programme in a plan to reintroduce them to society.

They are provided with contact lenses and cosmetics, to help them conceal their deceased status, and maintenance injections of medication to keep them from relapsing into a dangerous or "rabid" state.

The Daily Telegraph's Simon Horsford praised Mitchell and called the premise "a clever idea", despite having initial misgivings over the continued use of zombies.