"the show is said to follow two female protagonists and focus on the first generation to come-of-age in the zombie apocalypse."
I think theres a sweet spot of the zombie genre, and kids "coming of age" is not it. Its that initial panic. Following people not knowing whats going on. The chaos, the confusion. The walking dead has been falling off a series of cliffs for a few years now, but this, sounds straight up CW.
I was actually excited when I heard about what the new spin-off would be about, but after seeing the trailers for it, I have to say, I'm very disappointed. It doesn't seem like it'll be as good as I pictured it in my head.
You're right. The sweet spot with these zombie stories is always the initial discovery, panic and chaos. That's what I thought Fear The Walking Dead would be - follow the walker apocalypse from the beginning, but when they started to hold up in that suburb, that's when the show started to decline. I have liked the past few seasons, though, and it morphing into a sort of road trip western, but the initial seasons were disappointing.
I'd love a 7-season spin-off called The Walking Dead: Week One, sort of a mash-up of TWD and 24. Each TWD season is 16 episodes, so the show could play out in real time, each season being 16 straight hours from one of the days from the beginning of the apocalypse. Season 1 would be "Day One," Season 2, "Day Two," etc. I think a series like that would be really interesting, if they could keep the tension and momentum up for that long.
This discussion came up a lot on the old imdb boards.
Fear TWD was such a waste. It went quickly from "what's going on?" to "let's play monopoly and leave ever door open" to "nine days later."
One of the ideas that I liked was an anthology style series following a new group of survivors through their story arc during the outbreak. Once they reached the "new normal" stage, then start again with a new group.
The 24 style idea would work if done well, but I have a hard time imagining how it would play out during the ZA, with a new thing every hour.