Can a show be considered one of the year’s best, and also a harbinger for television’s demise? On paper, The Last of Us stands for just about everything wrong with TV as it exits its golden age and moves towards an era of mass-produced slop. An adaptation of – shudder – a video game? About that laziest of horror tropes, the undead. Produced by HBO, a network once synonymous with blue-chip drama, but now more concerned with franchise spin-offs like House of the Dragon and its forthcoming Harry Potter revival? Yikes.
That’s why you should never judge a show by its logline. The Last of Us might, in theory, have been all of the above, but it was also the sort of beautifully realised series that could hold its own against any of the big beasts of the golden age of TV. It was a big show that revelled in small, human moments, a family drama by stealth, a blockbuster with a brain and a beating heart.
