Telly Talk: Deputy Sheriff Rick Grimes would probably be the first to admit that he’s had better weeks.

First there is his wife, who seems to be permanently angry with him and his inability to articulate his feelings; then there’s the bullet that left him in a coma after a shoot-out with escaping criminals, and now there’s the fact that he’s woken from that coma to find that a zombie apocalypse has wiped out civilization and left the planet overrun by snarling, flesh hungry hordes of the walking dead. And they’ve just eaten his horse, which must just about put the tin hat on it all.

But we’ve all had weeks like this, haven’t we? Only yesterday I spilled mayonnaise on one of my favourite ties. I’m sharing your pain, bro.

The Walking Dead, the $20m, six episode adaptation of the epic survival horror comic by writer Robert Kirkman and the artists Tony Moore and Shrewsbury’s Charlie Adlard, made its British debut on Sky TV’s FX channel last night, and did not disappoint on any level.

British actors Andrew Lincoln and Lennie James convincingly portrayed two survivors in a world gone to hell.

Lincoln played Rick, a man searching for his wife and son, and James played the man who has his wife and son, only the wife isn’t allowed inside the house anymore because she’ll only try to rip them apart and eat them with her cold, undead hands.

The Walking Dead certainly didn’t skimp on the horror or gore. The theatrical blood stockists of Georgia must have been calling in supplies from all over the States judging by how much of the stuff this opening episode got through.

But director Frank Darabont made sure that it wasn’t just a splatter-fest. There were some fantastically tense scenes as Rick made his way through his bizarre new world, culminating in a sequence where the empty streets of Atlanta suddenly became filled with thousands of the walking dead.

And all the time as a viewer you found yourself suspending disbelief and thinking, ‘Blimey, what if…?

So now our hero is trapped inside a tank with an army of the ghouls trying to get in. Presumably he’ll get out somehow, because he’s got another five episodes to get through (and he was in the trailer for next week’s episode).

But somehow I doubt he’s in for a happy ending.

• For an interview with Shrewsbury Walking Dead artist Charlie Adlard, click here