In TV Land, the people of Los Angeles have no idea what’s about to hit them. After years of tantalizing coverage, the time has finally come to sit back, relax tense up, and enjoy AMC’s Walking Dead companion series, Fear the Walking Dead.

Robert Kirkman, creator of The Walking Dead graphic novels and the incredibly popular AMC flagship series of the same name, is behind Fear and he’s joined by many familiar producers including Gale Anne Hurd, Dave Alpert, and Greg Nicotero. Fear stars Kim Dickens, Cliff Curtis, Frank Dillane, Alycia Debnam-Carey, Elizabeth Rodriquez, Lorenzo James Henrie, Ruben Blades, and Mercedes Mason.

This summer at San Diego Comic Con, I learned first-hand just how different the new series feels, tonally, in comparison to the flagship series. When the city gets ripped apart by freshly infected walkers, viewers will be privy to immediate government action and more significantly, we’ll witness a family unequipped for surviving the apocalypse approach the walkers head on. Fear‘s first season, after all, serves as a prequel for fans of the franchise in that events unfold before we meet Rick Grimes and his band of survivors. Remember how Rick was in a coma and missed out on the early days of the walker invasion? This is the period we will live in over the course of Fear‘s first six episodes.

As exhilarating and intriguing as it sounds to be privy to the virus spreading, EP David Erickson reminds viewers that the show will drill its focus on the family at the center of it all. “It starts as a family drama, and we filter the apocalypse through that,” he said to the crowd at Comic Con. It’s about “a highly dysfunctional blended family trying to hold it together.”

Never tuned into The Walking Dead, which enters its sixth season this fall? Fear not (heh!). Kirkman and his team have been adamant in saying that Fear stands on its own and does not require you having seen a single episode of their other series.

Fear the Walking Dead premieres Sunday, August 23 at 9pm on AMC. Click here to preview the first three minutes of the highly anticipated pilot episode. And here to watch the official trailer.

Jump after the break to learn more about Patrick Stewart’s return to TV in Blunt Talk.

Remember Bored to Death, the wacky HBO comedy following a moonlighting private investigator played by Jason Schwartzman and featured Zach Galifianakis and Ted Danson? Well, Jonathan Ames, the creator of that incredibly engaging and often hysterical series, is back on the scene gifting his talents to another premium cable network, Starz. Executive producer Seth MacFarlane (Family Guy) hooked Ames up with Sir Patrick Stewart–the British actor best known for playing Capt. Jean-Luc Picard and Professor Xavier in Star Trek: The Next Generation and the X-Men films, respectively–to star in Blunt Talk.

Stewart is Walter Blunt, a British import intent on conquering American nightly cable news and his mostly misguided decision-making, on and off the air. Blunt’s described as a “borderline alcoholic, mad-genius-Brit, the man you want fighting in America’s corner.” As you can see in the official series trailer, Stewart is significantly deviating from his past roles, and the hilarious effect. He’s such a seasoned actor, mostly known for his more dramatic turns. Dropping him in such a new kind of environment, genre-wise, is a fun experiment that even MacFarlane (who works with Stewart on American Dad) knew from the get-go would be a great idea.

“At this point, one of pleasures of my career is to be able to connect people of whom I am a fan,” MacFarlane said at the Television Critics Association summer press tour. “It always struck me as criminal that Patrick Stewart had never been cast in a single-camera comedy. He’s…conquered every genre he has attempted. [Blunt Talk] just seemed to me like a no-brainer, and it was matter of pairing him with somebody who could really build a character for him as memorable as it should be.”

So, if you ever wanted to see Patrick Stewart on drugs and inviting hookers into his car, well then, Blunt Talk is for you. More than that, if you did tune into Bored to Death then you know just how absurdly brilliant Jonathan Ames’ brand of comedy really is; pairing him with Stewart is a match made in heaven and I can’t wait to witness the ensuing shenanigans to come.

Blunt Talk premieres Saturday, August 22 at 9pm on Starz. Can’t wait another second? The network is streaming the first episodes for free right here.