It's pretty clear to anybody watching both series that The Walking Dead is no longer television's premier zombie show. Its own spin-off, Fear the Walking Dead, has overtaken it in a number of ways, and there are plenty of lessons the parent show could learn from it.

Here are just five…

1. Take big risks

AMC

When was the last time The Walking Dead shocked us by offing a character? Yes, the Carl twist deviated from the comics, so that was a surprise, but it also came in a mid-season finale where it felt like a death was inevitable. (That the actual season finale didn't kill anyone was the worst kind of surprise).

The major deaths prior to Carl were Glenn, twice (don't get us started on that dumpster fake-out), and Abraham, but thanks to the 'Who did Negan kill?' cliffhanger the show had already told us that people were going to die, so the deaths were robbed of impact. So to speak.

You probably have to go back to poor Noah in the revolving door – season 5, episode 14 – for the last true surprise demise – and even then Noah was a relatively minor character.

Gene Page/AMC

Fear the Walking Dead, on the other hand, just killed off its second-biggest character in episode three of its latest season, what you'd reasonably expect to be a non-event episode. It was a huge move that nobody saw coming. Even better is that it didn't feel like a shock for shock's sake – killing off a member of the family at the heart of the show opens up fascinating plot paths for the surviving characters, and suggests that nobody is safe.

Fear is a show more about family than The Walking Dead, so to shatter the core unit at the heart of that premise is a bold move that could potentially redefine the entire show. The Walking Dead needs to take similar risks.

2. Change up locations

Jackson Lee Davis AMC

The Walking Dead doesn't feel like it's set in the real world – it exists in its own personal purgatory. The series has long since left Atlanta behind, and is now permanently mired in a dreary forest that nobody ever leaves.

Because the series is shot in the same place every season, even trips to other locations (Oceanside, say) which might provide variety, still feel part of the same lacklustre woodland. Everyone in this strange limbo spends their existence fighting amongst themselves, all within the confines of their mysteriously infinite forest, and it just never ends.

There will always be more walkers wandering through and more people to butt heads with, and that is all there ever is, or was, or will be.

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Fear, meanwhile, changes things up regularly. The first season was set in downtown LA, the second split between out on the open ocean and Mexico, while the third took up residence in a Texan ranch. The shooting locations also changed accordingly.

Not only does this allow for more varied stories to be told, with a diverse cast, but it allows the series to broaden its visual palette as well. Directorially, there are so many more interesting avenues for invention in Fear, and it makes the show that much more arresting and dynamic.

3. Don't be afraid to have fun

Gene Page/AMC

Honestly, has there ever been a drearier series than The Walking Dead? Watching it feels like an ordeal, and not because of any gruelling emotional impact, but because it's all so unrelentingly turgid.

Yes, this is a series about surviving the end of the world, but jeez, crack a joke once in a while, huh? And not just sadistic, Negan-style gallows humour. Everything is ultra-grim, all the time, and it's only Ezekiel's loyal, good-natured right-hand-man Jerry who ever brings the slightest ray of sunshine to the show. He's the unsung hero of latter-day The Walking Dead, and he must be protected at all costs.

Over on Fear, the Clarke family act like what they are – a family. They josh and joke with one another, even in dark times, in a way that Rick and Carl hardly ever did. That familiarity, while often fractured, also allows them a certain warmth; something that's scarce on the parent show, no matter how often Rick proclaims they're all one big family.

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And with wry characters like Strand and now Garrett Dillahunt's colourful cowboy John, the scripts have much more capacity for humour, even if the show itself remains largely serious.

Want the biggest example of why Fear is so much more fun than The Walking Dead? Fear did a zombie set-piece in a ball-pit. And it was genuinely tense. Scary, even! In a BALL PIT! Can you imagine The Walking Dead ever even considering something so wacky and inventive?

4. Make it feel real

Gene Page AMC

Going back to the purgatory point, it's exceedingly rare that anyone on The Walking Dead ever discusses the world pre-apocalypse.

Carl's reflections in his letter to Rick – about missing "Friday-night pizza" and family time – were refreshing, because hardly anybody on the show ever reminisces about their old lives, the things they miss, the people they lost.

None of them moan about not being able to phone for a pizza; none of them are annoyed that they never got to know how Game of Thrones ended. It just adds to the lifeless nature of the series – it's as if the old world never existed, and it makes the characters feel less like real people. They're just hollow bodies, doomed to endlessly roam their purgatorial forest for all eternity.

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The characters in Fear the Walking Dead – partly as a result of not being so geographically bound – are constantly coming across remnants of the old world, be it Otto with his ranch full of mod-cons, or a converted old baseball stadium, or the aforementioned ball pit.

Madison even makes a point of setting out each day to find something that makes her happy – something from the old world to remember. She appreciates old billboards – relics advertising wares to a world that no longer exists, but that the series at least acknowledges. And with Althea's video camera, the series found a very direct way to engage with its character's pasts by documenting their stories.

You can tell there was once a civilisation and that these people lived lives before the walkers. It grounds Fear in the real world – our world – and makes it a more relatable post-apocalyptic scenario, unlike the weird disconnection of The Walking Dead's bleak woodland limbo.

5. Forge its own path

Jackson Lee Davis/AMC

Fear the Walking Dead is an original story, not based on any pre-existing comics, and so has the freedom to do whatever it wants. The Walking Dead has, up until Carl's demise at least, remained largely faithful to its comic-based source material. They've chopped and changed a few things here and there, but broadly speaking, it's the same story being translated to the screen.

But with interest waning in the series, the time has come to cut loose. Hell, the series' first change from the comics was to invent the character of Daryl, and he's been the most enduringly popular character in the series since it began!

If the show is to recover and catch up with its over-achieving sibling, it will need to be more daring, take more risks, and branch out on its own. It's time for The Walking Dead to forge its own path – preferably one out of the Georgia forest.

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