"The Walking Dead" season five is off to a very good start as it garnered 17.3 million viewers on its premiere episode, breaking its own record of 16.1 million viewers in the previous season's premiere.

In a report by BBC, TV viewing figures tracking company Nielsen marked the post-apocalyptic zombie horror TV series as having the "biggest cable audience for a non-sports programme in the US."

It pulled in 11 million viewers from the 18-49 age group, an important demographic for sponsors, followed by "The Big Bang Theory" with 6.9 viewers from the same age range.

The show also reached record-breaking proportions in terms of illegal downloads, as reported by Variety. The episode was downloaded 1.27 million times in its first 24 hours, based on the numbers crunched by piracy tracking company Excipio. Just like TV viewership, this season's premiere topped last season's first episode in terms of piracy, which totaled to around 178,000.

The fourth season finale of "The Walking Dead" left 15.7 million cable viewers hanging. Breaking the convention of winding down the season with some kind of resolution, the show opted to keep the audience on a cliffhanger for months, and presented the denouement in the first episode of season five instead.

As expressed by Brian Moylan of The Guardian: "The Walking Dead managed to go out on a bang, leave viewers staring down the precipice for half of the year, and start off with another bang as it slowly pulled us away from that cliff."

Having resolved the issue of being trapped in a train surrounded by cannibals, the survivors are now off to start on a new venture.

The synopsis for season 5 episode 2, entitled "Strangers," reads: "With supplies running low and not knowing whether to trust the people around them, Rick leads a mission where the risk might not be worth the reward."

"The Walking Dead" season 5 airs every Sunday at 9 p.m. on AMC.