Loved the show from the beginning, even when the storylines have "slowed", & yeah you've got to learn to ignore all the glaring mistakes & holes in the plot, it still kicks the proverbial out of all the copycat series & films you find floating around on amazon etc.
The newer spin-offs have been quite good, Darrell Dixons story in particular, the last series ended with him & carol walking through the channel tunnel, & a snippet i saw from the new series showed them meeting up with one of the last remaing brits, plated by Stephen merchant, so should be funny if nothing else ?.
On a similar vein, been a big fan of the 28 days later genre, in particular 28 weeks as the filmed a lot of it in & around my old workplace when I was there, but saw the 3rd instalment recently, 28 years, gotta say I was seriously disappointed, but it did end as if there's another instalment coming, hopefully that'll be better ?.