I've watched four episodes now, and I have some reservations, but that's because the quality is high. The issues you might have with it are the result of being able to watch it at a level of engagement rather than making embarrassed excuses. Andrew Lincoln does a really good job I think, and the new character Daryl seems to be a welcome addition - a working class man who isn't servile or dumb as rocks. So pretty hot in my opinion. Alas the female characters continue to be dreadful. I feel the whole thing is quite conservative. Frank Darabont directed Shawshank and The Green Mile: so that sort of soft conservative.
My thought is that all shows where groups of people are fighting inhuman monsters allow us guilt-free return to our killer roots - for example the Alien films seem to be nostalgic for the paleolithic (to me). I think the nostalgia in Walking Dead is for a Feudal society built around war: small scale hand-to-hand-combat war. Those societies are probably in all history those where the warrior class of men have the most clear cut authority over all other people - because they put themselves on the line every day to defend the group - and there was no doubt that their fighting was good and necessary. How much simpler then.
In The Walking Dead the women, like a chorus, often repeat 'Civilisation has ended', 'The world has come to an end'. But it's not a new world now, it's an old world come back. It may be Darabont thinks he is portraying the primal human world, the stripped down core. I don't think he is; I think this is just one of the ways that humans can be. There is no primal human reason why women can only mourn and never fight. In countries where there are vicious animals women will pick up weapons; they never do (so far) in this show. It's more Ancient Greek than it's Paleolithic.
So why am I going on about this aspect? I suppose because it interests me. Not just in relation to this show, but the way that genre shows seem to recreate real or imagined pasts. And you know, clearly there is meat in a show which allows you to ruminate in this way. Meat!