After the relatively short first season left viewers salivating for more, season two of The Walking Dead, this time with 13 episodes, was always going to be battling expectation to some degree. It’s a fight it just about wins, though, save for a few bumps around the middle of the season, as the mixture of horror and drama continues to impress. It's a show more than capable of some excellent rug-pulls, too.

The Walking Dead, then, continues to follow a small group of survivors in a zombie-infested world. At first, it’s a slower collection of episodes than we saw with season one this time around. Certainly in episodes around the middle of the season, there's a sense that things are being saved and held back, and that the brakes are being gently applied. But then, season two of the show shoots out of the blocks exceptionally well, and the final run-in, too, is excellent. The strands it leaves in place for season three are particularly salivating, and there's an awful lot to like here.

As with season one's boxset, there's been a lot of effort with The Walking Dead season 2 to make it worth picking up on disc. Exclusive to the UK edition, for instance, is a series of character profiles. But you'll find more meat in the series of genuinely interesting featurettes. Elsewhere, you'll also find a selection of scenes that didn't make the final cut of the episodes.

Grown up drama in more than one sense, The Walking Dead is, even on its dryer days, an excellent series, and season two has ample evidence to support that. That it comes packed into a such an impressive set is all the better. --Jon Foster