Classy but constrained by its video game origins: Sky’s The Last of Us reviewed

The Last of Us is widely being hailed as the best video game adaptation ever. Maybe. But it’s still a video game adaptation. On one of the early levels, for example, you have to escape from a zombie apocalypse that has broken out in Houston, with your truck and your guns, being careful also to avoid the military authorities who will shoot you on sight. Later, your mission is to climb through some sewers, up a ladder and into the hidden entrance of an apartment complex to retrieve the car battery you need to effect your escape from the dystopian hellhole that is post-apocalypse Boston.

Instead of a virus, the deadly, world-changing threat is a fungus. And instead of zombies, the ever-present stalking menace are cannibalistic dead humans who’ve been brought back to life by the tendrilly horror of the fungal mycelia, a bit like those ants in the jungle that get hijacked and then devoured from within by the Ophiocordyceps unilateralis fungus. Naturally, as is always case in these scenarios, the only thing more dangerous than the zombies are the few surviving humans who mostly turn into either thieving, murderous scumbags or bully boys for the inevitable new fascist regime.

So we’ve been here before, an awful lot, from Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Walking Dead to To the Lake. I don’t mind the clichés, not remotely, because I do love a good apocalypse. What I’m worried about – I’ve just finished episode two – is whether there’s going to be quite enough human interest and unpredictability to keep me watching to the series end.

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Julie Burchill

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On the plus side, the male lead is played by Pedro Pascal, the impossible-not-to-like Chilean-American actor (the Red Viper in Game of Thrones; the DEA agent Javier Pena in Narcos), who does such a nice line in rugged yet warm heroes.