Season 1, Episode 1

Say what you will about the zombie apocalypse that turned the world into a desolate hellscape in “The Walking Dead”; it did have at least one thing going for it — it seemed to have killed off most of the teenagers.

Aside from Carl Grimes — the character fans most love to hate, remember — the show’s bloody South is mostly a land of hollow-eyed adults. Sunday’s premiere episode of “Fear the Walking Dead”illustrated the appeal of such a world. The real monsters are the kids — misfit addicts, two-faced drug dealers. Even the normalish ones are plotting to have their girlfriends over when you’re out of town, or refusing to forgive you for the divorce.

And that’s not even counting Tobias, the awkward boy with a knife in his pocket because, of course, he’s the one perceptive soul who sees this “flu” epidemic for what it is. (Hey, nerds: We get it. You’re the only ones who understand what’s really going on. What are you still trying to prove, anyway? Silicon Valley owns us, every movie has a superhero in it, and the biggest shows are based on comic books and fantasy novels. You’ve won.)

But where were we? Right. We began with Nick (Frank Dillane), a feral but essentially sweet heroin addict who wakes up to find his friend eating the face of another addict. (Don’t do drugs, kids! Not heroin, but especially not bath salts.) Nick’s panicked flight takes him into the path of a moving car, a clever, blunt-force introduction to the bustling familiarity of the prequel’s setting. The camera pans up to take in the thrum of Los Angeles — honking cars, pedestrians, planes, a churning civilization unaware that its undoing is just around the corner.

At the hospital, Madison, Nick’s weary mom (an appealingly flinty Kim Dickens, exhibiting the tender toughness she brought to “Deadwood”), has heard it all before. Cliff Curtis’s Travis, the softhearted stepdad, is more sympathetic, lending an ear to Nick’s ravings in the name of “building a family.” Madison’s daughter, Alicia (Alycia Debnam-Carey), the surly brainiac, rolls her eyes in the corner.

Over at the high school, the kids are disappearing by the bushel — flu, everyone assumes, though no one thinks to investigate via social media. (Social media, in general, goes oddly unacknowledged.) The ones left are watching videos of improbably bulletproof criminals, withstanding fusillades like undead Tony Montanas.

The lesson plans are straight out of the No Foreshadowing Left Behind Act of 2015. A science teacher discusses “brain states” and other phenomena “that are impossible to predict or control.” Travis goes deep on “To Build a Fire” reaching students with passionate points about Jack London’s “teaching us how not to die.”

That said, “nature always wins,” he says.

When Nick escapes the hospital, Madison and Travis go on the hunt, and we’re treated to the third visit to the needle church, which seemed to exist mostly to sprinkle a few perfunctory scares in amid all the family drama. There’s the blood and viscera, and addicts jumping from behind doors, much of the action unfolding atop the sort of jagged synth rumble that is to modern horror what screeching violins were in another era. (Of the differences between “Fear the Walking Dead” and the original, Mike Hale noted in his review, “volume is one of the most notable.”)

The prequel embraces the sort of conventions the original mostly avoids. Robert Kirkman, the mastermind behind the “Walking Dead” universe, has said the new series will “show people coming to grips with society crumbling around them in a way we mostly skipped over on ‘The Walking Dead.’”

The thing is, that skipping was the thing that made the original feel fresh, both in comic book and series form. It picked up where most horror tales leave off, exploring the contours of a broken world rather than fixating on the breaking itself.

Instead, here we get versions of things we’ve seen plenty before — a pulsing, tension-raising soundtrack, panicked traffic, police helicopters and boyfriends ominously missing appointments. Characters do that infuriating thing in which they decline to share incredibly relevant information for no good reason.

That church is a mess, Travis tells Madison after his solo visit. Nick might be on to something.

“Don’t enable him.”

“Something really bad happened there.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“I want to help,” Travis says, instead of saying the thing any sane person would say. Namely: “I’m doing this because there was agodforsaken swamp of blood and guts in there. I tripped and put my hand in it, and everything. We have to tell the cops, who for some reason haven’t investigated it on their own initiative.”

Later they find Nick but are more worried about Calvin, who not only sold their son the drugs but just tried to kill him, none of which Nick decides to mention.

To be fair, with rare exceptions, pilots gonna pilot. It takes some lifting to get a story going, and often that involves some clunky exposition and, especially in the case of a horror show, thudding moments of portent. Many of the show’s rough spots will probably be smoother in the coming weeks.

On the bright side, the primary family feels pretty authentic. Ms. Dickens is a convincing addict’s mom (the apprehension at the early-morning phone call, the erratic emotional responses) and the kids are charismatic.

Like the original, the show has an admirably diverse cast without making a big deal about it in the story itself, which makes its world seem more lived in and real. (Although, also as in the original, the black men seem disproportionately marked for death, at least in the first episode.)

By the end of the episode, Calvin has been run over a few times and is a ragged zombie in a desolate culvert. Things are starting to look, in other words, a little like “The Walking Dead.”

A few thoughts while we flip the gender script

• Look, honey, I fixed the leaky faucet! Nice work, Travis. But can you kill a zombie? The show seems to be setting up Madison as the strong one, which I’m hoping is the case. A female Rick Grimes would be an interesting wrinkle.

• Also intriguing: “It’s in the genes,” Madison says of Nick’s addiction. Wonder if that will come up again.

• Nitpick: “You’re right, Mrs. C,” Tobias the oracle says. Has anyone out there ever done the name-abbreviation thing in conversation with a teacher, mom or other authority figure? That only happens on TV, right?

• What else? Do we think Tobias will have a lasting role? The principal’s a goner, right? Any ideas about the significance of “Winesburg, Ohio,” the book Nick hid his works in? It’s been awhile since I read it. Please share whatever thoughts seem appropriate.