Stop me if you've heard this one before: A grizzled and world-weary loner of a man finds himself as the unlikely ward for a child whom some claim to be the future savior of the post-apocalyptic world in which survivors are struggling to live. Together, the man and child embark on a road trip that may bring them closer together while also sometimes tearing them apart due to the monsters and murderers who now claim the lands.

Yes, let's address the zombified elephant in the room; The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon is clearly derivative of The Last of Us (TLOU) and awkwardly comes just a few months after TLOU impressed as a live-action TV series based on the beloved Naughty Dog game. Though TWD's Greg Nicotero incredulously says he had no idea about The Last of Us until recently, it doesn't really matter. TLOU hardly created this trope. From The Road and The Book of Eli to The Girl with All the Gifts and The Passage, the surrogate-dad-versus-monsters ground is well-trodden. Thankfully, Daryl Dixon does more than just retell a familiar tale.

The story setup of Daryl Dixon sounds a bit silly at first. With Daryl almost inconceivably ending up in France after spending the main series on the US east coast, obvious questions are there to be answered, namely how did this happen and how might he return to the loved ones we know? To this end, the six-episode first season does really well to delay turning over every stone for the viewer, and that's aided tremendously by a compelling central plot and a new cast of characters who deserve their screen time.