The Last of Us (TV series

2023 - 1 - 16

The Last of Us

Post cover — Image courtesy of "British GQ"

The Last of Us premiere knew exactly what to change from that ... (British GQ)

That's the setup in the prologue to the video game, which puts you at the wheel of Sarah, Joel's aforementioned daughter, portrayed in the adaptation by Nico ...

The brilliance of the prologue in the game is that it dunks you in icy water from the off. Spending more time with Sarah, it's clearer to see why Joel, in the throes of grief even tweo decades later, so soon embraces this uncanny stand-in. Parker is brilliant, too: she imbues Sarah with the sure-mindedness of someone double her age, in friction with her innate, big-eyed innocence. What happens when the thing you love the most — in the case of Joel, played in the series by [Pedro Pascal](https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/culture/article/pedro-pascal-interview-2022), his daughter — is snatched away from you by the cosmos, by circumstance, by something so insane as an overnight pandemic that renders its victims blood-thirsty, parasitic puppets? A family friend's farmstead burns in the night. He comes home, they watch a movie together, she falls asleep on his shoulder; it's the daddy-daughter relationship of a guy who simply does his best and a kid who, wise beyond her years, appreciates it nevertheless.

How the 'Last of Us' game compares to HBO TV series (Business Insider)

HBO's 'The Last of Us' is a faithful adaptation of the hit video game, but there are some key differences. Here's how they compare. Travis Clark.

Ellie explains to Joel and Ellie that her bite is weeks old. Like in the game, Joel is now in Boston, doing what he can to survive with his partner Tess, played by Anna Torv. She promises to give Joel and Tess their supplies back, including a truck for them to escape, if they can smuggle a girl named Ellie, played by Bella Ramsey, out of the quarantine zone. The first episode of the HBO series then jumps to 2003 — and the watch scene — next. The player wanders the house as Sarah and can look at things like newspapers that foreshadow some sort of outbreak. The biggest difference from the beginning of the game and the HBO series' first episode is at the very beginning.

HBO's The Last of Us is airing now – here's how to watch it in the UK (The Independent)

After percolating in development hell for six years, with two film adaptations of the hit video game failing to get off the ground, HBO has finally done it. The ...

Here’s the full release schedule for The Last of Us in the UK: The Last of Us on HBO has nine episodes in total. [Watch ‘The Last of Us’ on HBO Max](https://www.hbomax.com/series/the-last-of-us) The Last of Us will be airing exclusively on Sky Atlantic here in the UK. Here’s where you can watch The Last of Us in the UK, online and on TV. [HBO Max](https://www.hbomax.com/series/the-last-of-us). [Watch ‘The Last of Us’ on Now TV](https://www.awin1.com/awclick.php?mid=11006&id=201309&p=https://www.nowtv.com/watch-the-last-of-us) [Buy the Sky Stream box now](https://www.awin1.com/awclick.php?mid=12422&id=201309&p=https://www.sky.com/deals/tv) [Nowtv.com](https://www.awin1.com/awclick.php?mid=11006&id=201309&p=https://www.nowtv.com/choose-your-entertainment-membership)). [broke records](https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/the-last-of-us-rotten-tomatoes-b2262497.html) on the reviews aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes. Survivor Joel (played by Pedro Pascal from Game of Thrones) has been hired to smuggle 14-year-old Ellie (Bella Ramsey, also from Game of Thrones) across the country because she could hold the key to humanity’s survival. After percolating in development hell for six years, with two film adaptations of the hit video game failing to get off the ground, HBO has finally done it.

The Biggest Differences Between HBO's The Last of Us and ... (menshealth.com)

HBO's The Last of Us is based on the beloved video game of the same name, but fans can expect some changes. Learn the differences between the show and the ...

We spend ample time with Sarah, allowing Joel’s future interactions with Ellie to contrast more sharply, and we also get to know the neighbors who first introduce us to the game’s pandemic and see a bit of pre-pandemic life. We see Tess’s tussle with Robert, the arms dealer who ripped off her and Joel, and his henchmen, which is merely alluded to at the start of the game. Lastly, Joel and Tess’s pursuit of Robert and subsequent meeting with Marlene and Ellie is altered a bit. In the show, the pandemic breaks out in 2003, with most of the show taking place in 2023. We see more of the work Joel and Tess do, with Joel establishing contact with a FEDRA soldier to swap goods. Nobody would have to do much thinking to draw a connection between characters masking up to prevent infection and our own reality, but don’t we want to have to do at least a little bit of thinking? The show opens in 1968, with two infectious disease experts discussing with a TV journalist the possibility of global pandemics. While HBO’s The Last of Us is true to the game, those who have played it can look forward to differences, if not surprises. [COVID-19 pandemic](https://www.menshealth.com/health/a41713931/covid-and-flu-how-to-tell-the-difference/), the first of them warns of increased air travel enabling a mutated supervirus to spread easily, and if the contradiction of the other expert dismissing just viral illness to warn instead about fungi seems like cheap irony, it turns around. Since its announcement, however, [HBO’s The Last of Us](https://www.menshealth.com/entertainment/a42445349/the-last-of-us-season-1-episode-1-recap/) has promised something more. It’s The Last of Us.” [adaptations of video games](https://www.menshealth.com/entertainment/g36026663/video-game-movies/) to other media often leave both old and new audiences wanting.

The Last of Us Levels Up Its Opening (Vulture)

In its first 25 minutes, the HBO adaptation of 'The Last of Us' achieves an energy the game longed to emulate.

For those with a strong attachment to the original work, the last decade was essentially building up to this moment, and what transpires in the TV adaptation is something close to a (The remake with more modern tech, released last fall, is only somewhat better.) Since this is a game, it’s also a sequence with a fail state. It’s really something to see a prestige TV show literally translate a scene from a game that was, in its own way, already emulating a prestige TV show. The plane crash, for example, is an invention for the show; in the video game, Sarah and Joel are knocked out when another car slams into theirs. The HBO remake of the outbreak sequence is striking in how it fully realizes what the original work was simulating. Playing the game, you can feel The Last of Us strain to use its elemental tools to achieve the kind of cinematic storytelling it’s going for, even as it’s ultimately successful. The camera assumes a view from the back seat, mimicking Sarah’s perspective as the family tries to get out of Dodge. (Though one could possibly argue Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men, which does a ton of world-building through background elements that the camera often glides by, came quite close.) The very first character you control is Sarah, whom you guide through a splendid sequence that evokes the feeling of being a child alone at home. John Hannah plays the more portentous of the duo, laying out the mechanics of what will eventually drive the apocalypse in this universe: mind-controlling fungus, previously a phenomenon contained to the insect world, pushed by climate change to evolve such that it makes the jump into human beings. As someone long familiar with the source material, the choice is exciting: the HBO version places a premium on leaving room to breathe. This wasn’t necessarily the case in the source material. However, back in 2013, the game was still doing its best with the tools it had within the context of its medium.

How Merle Dandridge became the only <em>The Last of Us</em ... (EW.com)

Creators Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin say the new scenes with Marlene and Ellie in the premiere will bring "a greater payoff" by the end of the show.

That was an opportunity to start showing more of that relationship with Marlene, which then has a greater payoff later because we've established the relationship more explicitly here." Baker will appear later in The Last of Us as James, a minor character from the games that has been expanded on for the show. Scenes between her character and Ramsey's Ellie confirm that Marlene is somehow linked to the girl's origin story. The BAFTA Award winner is the only legacy actor from the original video games to play the same role in the live-action series adaptation, that of Marlene, the leader of the rebel group known as the Fireflies. "Don't ever stand next to her in a picture," warns Neil Druckmann, who created the games and now heads the show with Mazin. She was a little more weathered and [had] a little more grey in her hair."

The Last of Us review – one of the finest TV shows you will see this ... (The Guardian)

This desperately moving drama set in a zombie-ravaged US is a phenomenal blend of horror and heart, with a cast that could not be more perfect.

Yet it manages to find humanity in the ruins – and that makes it worth the hardship. It is a gorgeous detour into the wider world; as many critics have said already, it might be one of the finest episodes of TV you will see this year. The fact that it manages to resist a sentimental approach and yet still finds such soul is a real achievement. What is left of society is in the hands of an authoritarian military regime fighting rebel groups classed as terrorists and it is bleak as hell. The Last of Us is violent and maudlin. That is the terrifying premise of The Last of Us (Sky Atlantic), another post-apocalyptic prestige drama in a TV landscape that, for understandable reasons, is stuffed with game-over scenarios.