HBO's The Last of Us is by far the best video game adaptation ever made for the big or small screen.
That's the blurb HBO wants for this post-apocalyptic tale of desperation, perseverance and zombies, and that's the blurb HBO is sure to get  because it's almost incontestably true. At the same time, it undersells just how very good The Last of Us is, simply as a TV show  albeit one existing fans will recognize as closely, at times shot-for-shot and line-for-line, linked to its Naughty Dog source material.
The best thing I can say about The Last of Us is that, as often as it made me think of The Walking Dead  and it’s unavoidable that it will make you think of The Walking Dead  it more frequently reminded me of the desperate, weary humanism of Station Eleven, and even of the deeply felt central relationship in Charlotte Wells' film Aftersun, an otherwise very different story of a father and daughter learning to communicate in an alien world.
So there's your alternative blurb, HBO, one that I expect to see on billboards nationwide: "The Last of Us: It’s like Aftersun with horrifying mushroom-men!"
Adapted by Craig Mazin (Chernobyl) with game creator Neil Druckmann, The Last of Us begins with a 1960s TV panel show warning about the dangers of an evolved global fungal infection before jumping to 2003, where everything is normal for Texas contractor Joel (Pedro Pascal), his daughter Sarah (Nico Parker) and her brother Tommy (Gabriel Luna). Then, in almost no time, news reports go from unrest in Jakarta to panic in the streets to airplanes falling from the sky.
Twenty years later, the Cordyceps infection has nearly wiped out humanity, leaving the survivors contained to a few urban quarantine zones, under the regulatory thumb of FEDRA. Joel has become something of an outlaw, smuggling with partner Tess (an initially unrecognizable Anna Torv), looking out mostly for himself.
That's when the leader of a resistance movement (Merle Dandridge’s Marlene) introduces him to obstinate 14-year-old Ellie (Bella Ramsey). Ellie is an orphan who has grown up only in a post-plague world, and she's special: She sustained a bite from one of the infected, who still roam the earth in myriad forms, but she didn’t turn. Ellie's immunity could offer hope for humanity, but only if Joel and Tess can get her to a facility across the country  no easy feat since, as every post-apocalyptic drama ever made has attempted to emphasize, as bad as whatever wiped out most of humanity already was, people in extremis can be far worse.
- Washington Post
- BBC