I write this from a perspective of a person who have read Kirkman's comic books, so I'd be a bit grumpy about the whole thing - you know us, we're Nazis ;).
The great problem with the medium swap in the case of "The Walking Dead" seems to be that comic book can focus on characters and their development without hurry. One issue - one character, who is most important now (also, they are far more killable). Meanwhile, actors need to have their screen time and, as a consequence, are shown doing pretty meaningless stuff, which doesn't forward the plot or put them in challenging position (and those conversations which are supposed to show us something new... they rarely do IMHO).
The characters development is going in the right direction, Rick is getting more violent and determined, becomes the one we love from the comic books (but less diplomatic, that's for sure). Same with Carl. I suspect Dale is getting grumpy too early, compared to his paper version, but the "new guys": Shane and Daryl show some promise.
The show was pretty consistent before: you get careless - you die. I think that the thing that ruined this feel was Lori doing her little act. Are the show creators going to make another example of her?