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Caryn James picks out the biggest offerings – from HBO's adaptation of hit videogame The Last of Us to Rian Johnson's murder mystery series Poker Face and reality show The Traitors. (Credit: BBC) (Credit: BBC) 1 Happy Valley Seven years after the last season ended, we finally have the third and final instalment of Sally Wainwright's lifelike, emotional police drama set in Northern England. Catherine Cawood (played with brilliant down-to-earth realism by Sarah Lancashire) is about to retire from the police force in the Yorkshire town of Hebden Bridge – then a dead body points her toward the series' once-and-future villain, Tommy Lee Royce, who raped Catherine's daughter and caused her eventual suicide. The usually dashing James Norton returns in evil mode as Royce, the father of Catherine's 16-year-old grandson. With Lancashire's bracing performance and Wainwright's deft mix of family ties and detailed detective work, the series has always surpassed the tropes of the police genre. In the runup to the new season, The Guardian declared it "one of the best TV dramas of the 21st Century." Happy Valley continues on BBC1 in the UK and will be on AMC+ in the US later this year (Credit: Netflix) (Credit: Netflix) 2 Kaleidoscope It's choose-your-own chronology in this heist drama. Giancarlo Esposito stars as Leo Pap, mastermind of a gang trying to rob mogul Roger Salas (Rufus Sewell) of $7 billion held in his supposedly impenetrable New York City vault. The trick is that the eight episodes are designed to be watched in any order you choose (except for the finale), so that different viewers will piece together the would-be crime in different ways. Pap plays the long game, as the story covers 25 years. The episodes, each identified by a colour rather than a number, have titles like, The Blue Episode: 5 Days before The Heist and The Violet Episode: 24 Years Before the Heist. Sounds like work, but it also looks like Esposito, so smoothly criminal in Breaking Bad, is worth it. Kaleidoscope is available now on Netflix internationally (Credit: Netflix) (Credit: Netflix) 3 The Lying Life of Adults Based on Elena Ferrante's 2019 novel, this Italian-language series is a coming-of-age story set in Naples, familiar to readers of Ferrante's four other Neapolitan novels and their television adaptation, My Brilliant Friend (from different producers). The period is the 1990s, when teenaged Giovanna (Giordana Marengo) overhears her father tell her mother that their daughter is ugly, just like his sister Vittoria. Giovanna seeks out free-spirited Aunt Vittoria (Valeria Golino, The Morning Show), whose social status is far below that of her upscale brother's, and who takes Giovanna under her wing. Obviously, neither aunt nor niece is ugly, inside or out, but Ferrante specialises in bringing to light the vicious, hurtful comments that can change a life. The Lying Life of Adults is available now on Netflix internationally (Credit: Netflix) (Credit: Netflix) 4 Copenhagen Cowboy A thriller laced with the surreal, Nicholas Winding Refn's series premiered at the 2022 Venice Film Festival, which makes sense. In its fluorescent visual look and dark, mysterious sensibility, it resembles his feature films, including The Neon Demon and Drive. The show's six episodes are set in Refn's native Copenhagen, where a woman named Miu (Angela Bundalovic) has been sold to various owners who were able to exploit her genie-like powers. Now out for revenge on those who abused her, she travels through the city's criminal underworld, where one person she encounters wonders if she is a ghost, and another asks if she is a devil. Clarity and plot have never been Refn's main concerns, but his dynamic, action-fuelled style is like no one else's. Copenhagen Cowboy is available now on Netflix internationally (Credit: Amazon Prime Video) (Credit: Amazon Prime Video) 5 The Rig This big-budget supernatural thriller is set on an oil drilling platform in the North Sea, far off the Scottish coast. Just as the crew is about to head back to land, a mysterious fog envelops them, cutting off communication with the outside world, causing mayhem and psychological meltdowns. Imagine that feeling of the WiFi going down, multiplied exponentially. Lights flicker, fires erupt, and the crew – played by Emily Hampshire (Stevie Budd on Schitt's Creek), Martin Compston (Line of Duty), Iain Glen and Mark Bonner among others – are rightly terrified. David Macpherson, the series' creator, has said about its influences, "I am a big fan of the Alien films", a good template for a show about something monstrous stalking humans in very cramped quarters. The Rig is available now on Amazon Prime Video internationally (Credit: Hulu) (Credit: Hulu) 6 Koala Man This animated adult comedy is a superhero satire, set in an Australian suburb where an average middle-aged dad named Kevin (voiced by the series' creator, Michael Cusack) puts on a Koala mask, ties a home-made cape around his shoulders and goes into battle. His main targets are not supervillains, but pesky people who break the rules. "I've made it my life's mission to clean up our streets," he says, and he just might mean pick up the rubbish. Hugh Jackman is the voice of Big Greg, the egotistical head of the Town Council and Kevin's boss at his office day job, and Sarah Snook (Shiv on Succession) is Kevin's sometimes exasperated wife. The success of animated series like Bojack Horseman and Rick and Morty (Justin Roiland, that show's co-creator, is an executive producer here) have created an appetite for this kind of skewed, savvy humour. Koala Man premieres on 9 January on Hulu in the US (Credit: Peacock) (Credit: Peacock) 7 The Traitors Just before Christmas, this high-concept reality show based on a Dutch format was a mega-hit in the UK. That bodes well for the US iteration, which features the perpetually bemused and appealing Alan Cumming as host. The format is the same: in a Scottish castle, contestants face challenges, all the while lying and scheming as the players designated The Faithful try to root out the Traitors and avoid being "murdered" by them. This time, however, not all the players are ordinary people, as they are in the British version. The US show mixes a sales executive, a hair stylist and a yoga instructor with veterans of reality series, among them Kate Chastain of Below Deck and Brandi Glanville of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. Peacock is calling this a star-studded cast. You decide. But it may be interesting to see if the players already experienced in on-camera plotting, manoeuvering and psychological trickery have an edge. The Traitors premieres on 12 January in Peacock in the US (Credit: HBO) (Credit: HBO) 8 The Last of Us There's a plague-driven quarantine and zombies – one part of this much-anticipated, post-apocalyptic story is perfectly relatable today. The series, based on the groundbreaking 2013 videogame, is set 20 years after a worldwide infection has caused civilisation itself to crumble. Joel (Pedro Pascal, fresh from The Mandalorian) is hired to smuggle 14-year-old Ellie (Bella Ramsey, aka Lyanna Mormont in Game of Thrones, and most recently star of Lena Dunham's Catherine Called Birdy) from a quarantine zone to safety. Their road trip is prone to bad weather and filled with people ready to kill them, not to mention those nasty zombies. They also encounter guest appearances from Melanie Lynsky, Nick Offerman, Murray Bartlett and Storm Reid. At first Joel says Ellie is no more than cargo; we'll see how long that lasts. A promising indicator for the series: it was created by Craig Mazin, who did the suspenseful HBO drama Chernobyl, working with Neil Druckmann, creative director of the PlayStation game. The Last of Us premieres on 15 January on HBO and HBO Max in the US and 16 January on Sky Atlantic and Now in the UK (Credit: Fox) (Credit: Fox) 9 Accused The trend for anthology series hasn't peaked yet. This crime drama is based on the British series that ran for two seasons from 2010 to 2012, in which each episode begins in court, with a defendant waiting for a verdict. That defendant's flashbacks unveil what really happened. In this US translation, the cast and setting once again change with each instalment, with the likes of Wendell Pierce, Michael Chiklis, Margo Martindale, Abigail Breslin, Rachel Bilson and Jack Davenport cropping up. Olivia Colman won a Bafta for the British series, so the bar is set high. Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa, producers of Homeland, and David Shore (House) are the creative team behind this version, and Fox teases that they are likely to include topical, resonant social justice issues. Accused premieres on 22 January on Fox in the US (Credit: Peacock) (Credit: Peacock) 10 Poker Face Created by Rian Johnson, this mystery-of-the-week series is a knowing throwback and homage to the days of Columbo. Natasha Lyonne plays Charlie, a private investigator with a gift for weeding out lies, who goes on the road and in each episode finds a crime to solve in a new location. The format allows for a revolving door of guest stars, among them Adrien Brody, Chloe Sevigny, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Nick Nolte and Ron Perlman. Lyonne's droll, no-nonsense demeanor (on display in the mind-bending series Russian Doll) should define the tone. And the playful crime-solving with a large, starry cast is reminiscent of Johnson's Knives Out films, which make old-fashioned mysteries feel new again. Poker Face premieres on 26 January on Peacock in the US If the pandemic has taught us anything about work, it's that we don't need to be pulling long hours in an office to be productive. So, why is presenteeism still so important? A As we head into 2022, Worklife is running our best, most insightful and most essential stories from 2021. When you're done with this article, check out our full list of the year's top stories. It's almost hard to imagine a time in which people spent at least 40 hours a week in a physical office (and often even longer to impress the boss). But in the pre-pandemic workforce, this kind of 'presenteeism' – being physically in your seat at work just to look dedicated, no matter how unproductive – was just another fact of office life. Before the pandemic, data from one UK survey showed that 80% of workers said presenteeism existed in their workplace, with a quarter of the respondents saying it had got worse since the prior year. But now, remote work has provided bosses and workers alike with an overdue opportunity to re-evaluate this ingrained presenteeism. We've long known presenteeism is problematic: it can cost a nation's economy tens of billions of dollars as sick people drag themselves into the office and infect others; it creates toxic environments that lead to overwork, as people putting in long hours piles pressure on everyone else to do the same. We know it's productivity that matters, not being chained to your desk or computer – and it's a conversation we've been having for years. Yet, despite a golden chance to ditch the practise amid a new work world, the emphasis on presenteeism is alive and kicking. Now, presenteeism has simply gone digital: people are working longer than ever, responding to emails and messages at all hours of the day to show how 'engaged' they are. And, as bosses call workers back into the office, evidence is mounting that we perhaps haven't moved the dial on presenteeism at all. So, despite what we know, why is presenteeism still so emphasised? It's not simply that bosses are hungering to hover over workers as they toil. Rather, subconscious biases keep the practise intact – and unless we do a better job acknowledging its harm, and set up workplaces to discourage it, we're likely to be slaves to presenteeism forever. Why managers still fall for presenteeism Clinging to a presenteeism culture just favours those "who have the time to show up early and leave late", says Brandy Aven, associate professor of organisational theory, strategy and entrepreneurship at Carnegie Mellon University's Tepper School of Business, US. Aven also points out that this can unfairly favour some workers over others – parents may have no choice but to leave early, for example. Yet as bad as presenteeism is, there are some indications that people who don't put in face time may actually get penalised. For example, although almost unfathomable now, telecommuting has generally been stigmatised as irresponsible, and has subsequently held some workers back. A 2019 study, for example, found that telecommuting workers who worked at companies in which remote work was unusual experienced slower salary growth. Presenteeism has been long ingrained in office culture, even though research shows that working extra hours doesn't actually equate to more productivity (Credit: Getty Images) Presenteeism has been long ingrained in office culture, even though research shows that working extra hours doesn't actually equate to more productivity (Credit: Getty Images) These factors can alarm workers, many of whom have come to fear that a lack of physical office presence will stunt success. And the normalisation of remote work amid the pandemic hasn't necessarily changed this; in 2020, researchers from human-resources software company ADP found that 54% of British workers felt obliged to physically come into the office at some point during the pandemic, especially those in their early-and mid-careers, despite the rise in flexible working. Leigh Thompson, professor of management and organisations at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Business, US, says there are two key psychological phenomena that fuel presenteeism. The first is the 'mere-exposure effect', which holds that the more a person is exposed to someone or something, the more they start to grow affinity. "If I've seen one person 10 times for every one time I've seen somebody else, I'm just naturally going to like them more," explains Thompson. If a particular worker makes themselves more visible, they may naturally ingratiate themselves to others just by being there – even if the others don't realise it, or can't pinpoint what is it they like about the 'presentee'. "[You might say],'I don't know, I like their smile, I like their attitude – they're leadership material'," says Thompson. And, before you know it, the presentee might get a raise or promotion. This bias exists alongside another psychological concept called the 'halo effect': associating positive impressions of someone with their actual character. "You start to think of the person who's bringing you coffee or asking about your weekend as maybe 'a sweet guy' – but then I take the mental step of thinking you're a productive worker, too," says Thompson. "You're nice, and then I immediately bloom that out to, 'the guy must be a hard worker as well' – even though you've given me no evidence in this coffee-cup situation to make me think that you're a hard worker." This can lead to promotions or other benefits going to in-person workers. Showing up for the sake of it Ironically, despite the potential rewards of showing your face at the office, workers aren't actually necessarily more productive when they're putting in that face time or working overtime. Still, workers feel the need to perform – both in person and now digitally – since managers don't necessarily know their workers aren't actually accomplishing anything extra. In fact, during the pandemic, the number of hours worked around the world have gone up, not down. In 2020, over the course of the year, average daily working hours increased by more than a half hour on average. The idea is, if everyone else is online, I need to be, too. Many bosses only see the most visible people, so they assume those are the most productive employees. As bad as presenteeism is, there are some indications that people who don't put in face time may actually get penalised This is a relatively new problem. Back when the economy was more manufacturing-centric, it was easier to measure tangible outcomes: this gets built, this doesn't. But "as we've shifted to a knowledge economy, it's much squishier to measure what output actually looks like", says Scott Sonenshein, professor of organisational behaviour at Rice University's Jones Graduate School of Business in Houston, Texas. So, in lieu of something measurable, managers tend to think workers are producing as long as they're at their desks. Workers know managers value this visibly – and so they fall into the presenteeism trap, especially as they see their peers doing the same. This is especially true in times of economic instability – such as we're experiencing right now, due to Covid-19 – when workers fear the stability of their jobs. They work because they want to prove they can tough out stress and excel, as well as be reliable. However, this ultimately backfires, since the quality of workers' output suffers as a result of this rush to perform. In the UK, for instance, 35 workdays are lost per worker per year in the UK due to presenteeism, and research also shows that productivity plummets after working more than 50 hours a week. How to stamp out presenteeism Now, in an era in which work practices have undergone seismic transformations, and have triggered unprecedented scrutiny, there's an urgent need to reduce the emphasis on presenteeism, both physically and digitally. Even though more workers don't have a place to physically be present, many still feel like they need to be virtually present at all times. But, like burnout, which also fundamentally threatens the way we work, fixing huge, existential issues including presenteeism requires a big, top-down overhaul of what's valued in the workplace and why. |
The best under-the-radar series from last year, including a spy thriller starring Gary Oldman, Andrew Garfield as detective in a true crime drama, and Sarah Lancashire as the chef Julia Child. (Credit: AppleTV+) (Credit: AppleTV+) 1. Slow Horses Misfits are the heroes in this sleek, irreverent spy thriller. Gary Oldman stars as dishevelled, alcoholic but supersmart Jackson Lamb, who heads up a team of out-of-favor MI5 agents located in Slough House, which earned them the nickname Slow Horses. Jack Lowden plays young, impulsive, daring River Cartwright, whose promising career was reversed when a training exercise went very wrong. The classic spy tropes keep things moving, but it's the cast that makes the series so glittering. Oldman's sly, irascible Lamb is actually likeable. The charismatic Lowden seems ready for a breakout role. Kristin Scott Thomas plays the haughty deputy director of MI5, and Jonathan Pryce is Cartwright's retired MI5 grandfather. The second season (of four that are planned) features Cold War sleeper agents and Russian oligarchs, and we learn the secret behind Lamb's exile to Slough House. The spy genre is rarely so fresh or fun to watch. Available on AppleTV+ internationally (Credit: Michelle Faye/FX) (Credit: Michelle Faye/FX) 2. Under the Banner of Heaven Andrew Garfield gives one of his best performances as a faithful Mormon detective and family man investigating the murder of a young mother and her child, with the main suspects members of his own church. The show is based on Jon Krakauer's bestselling true crime book about real-life murders in Utah in 1984. But the series creator, Dustin Lance Black, had the brilliant idea of creating Garfield's fictional character of Jeb Pyre, whose faith is challenged by the investigation, and of inventing his non-religious, Native American partner, Detective Bill Taba (the always solid Gil Birmingham). This thoughtful drama plays out as a murder mystery but is also a timely depiction of how religious extremism, politics and violence can mix with devastating results. Available on Hulu in the US and Disney+ in the UK (Credit: HBO Max) (Credit: HBO Max) 3. Julia There is no shortage of films about Julia Child, including Julie and Julia (2009) with Meryl Streep and the engaging, thorough documentary Julia (2021), but none as effervescent as this series. Sarah Lancashire embodies the high spirits, occasional self-doubt and tenacity of the woman who in middle age became famous as The French Chef. Focusing on her early, bumpy years on television and her first burst of fame, the show is perfect, buoyant escapism even when Julia is challenged. David Hyde Pierce plays her ever-loyal, much-loved husband, Paul, and Bebe Neuwirth is her best friend, Avis DeVoto. In and out of the kitchen (where there are many culinary missteps) the series never flags. You won't see anyone appreciate a drag Julia Child impersonator more than Lancashire dancing along as Julia herself. Available on HBO Max in the US and NOW in the UK (Credit: BBC) (Credit: BBC) 4. The Responder British viewers might be familiar with this unrelentingly tense cop drama, but in the US it wasn't even a blip. Martin Freeman, far from his roles as Bilbo Baggins or the helpful Dr Watson, plays Chris Carson, a recently demoted police officer in mental anguish, who tells his therapist "I don't even know what's right and wrong any more." Talk about flawed heroes. Already corrupt, he has now been dragged into a dangerous drug deal. The more he helps a young addict avoid the crime lords trying to kill her, the deeper he gets in himself. As the story follows him through a week, each episode is more intense than the one before, the camera often capturing Chris' tortured face in close up – Freeman gives a fiercely real performance – as he deals with his fractured marriage, his dying mother (Rita Tushingham) and his by-the-book new partner (Adelayo Adedayo). The Responder is one of the most morally ambiguous, tough-minded shows of the year. Available on Britbox in the US and BBC iPlayer in the UK (Credit: HBO Max) (Credit: HBO Max) 5. I Hate Suzie Too The three-episode second season of British comedy-drama I Hate Suzie is even more visceral and mordant than the first, and Billie Piper even more fascinating to watch. She's a train wreck in action as the one-time teen sensation and current C-list celebrity Suzie Pickles. As season one ended, Suzie's sex scandal had destroyed her marriage. In this new series, set in the run-up to Christmas, she is a contestant on a show called Dance Crazee (think Dancing with the Stars or Strictly Come Dancing but even more cringe-inducing). While the dances give us dark comedy, the downward spiral of Suzie's mental state is wrenching. Struggling to get joint custody of her young son, she makes as many bad choices as ever. Co-created by Lucy Prebble (who wrote the play Enron and is a writer on Succession) and Piper, Suzie Too offers a scathing look at the price of celebrity culture, along with a vivid, textured glimpse behind the scenes of a reality show. Available on HBO Max in the US and NOW in the UK (Credit: HBO Max) (Credit: HBO Max) 6. Barry What began in 2018 as an absurdist comedy about Barry (Bill Hader), a hitman who started a new career as an actor, has gotten progressively deeper and darker. Now it has veered into once-a-killer-always-a-killer territory, but where some shows make you want to run from the mind of a murderer, Barry is sharper, more engrossing and more original than ever as it takes us into Barry's off-kilter world. Henry Winkler is dynamic as Gene Cousineau, Barry's acting teacher, who now knows that Barry killed his girlfriend. There is still wit, especially in Gene's egotistical attempts to resurrect his acting career. But the trajectory is focused on Barry's increasing rage as he descends into the darkest part of himself. The show is set apart from others by its sharp direction (co-creators Hader and Alec Berg split this season between them) and editing (there is not a wasted scene). Always more of a critical then popular success, Barry deserves a wide audience. Available on HBO Max and Amazon Prime Video in the UK (Credit: Hulu) (Credit: Hulu) 7. Welcome to Wrexham If Ted Lasso were a reality show, it would be the witty, endearing Welcome to Wrexham, in which Hollywood actors Ryan Reynolds (Deadpool) and Rob McElhenney (Mythic Quest and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia) buy the Welsh football club Wrexham AFC, even though they have never set foot in Wales and still think of the game as soccer. The cameras follow them as they discover just how many millions of dollars it costs to try to boost the team out of its lowest-rank National League tier, explaining British football to viewers in the US along the way. The heart of the series is its focus on the people of the town of Wrexham, which has fallen on hard economic times. We follow them into the pubs, into their homes and to the matches, as they talk about how important the team is in their lives. The reality show tropes are there, with all their apparent artifice, but through 18 half-hour episodes the series acquires genuine warmth. Based on the mega-hit PlayStation game, about a man and a teenage girl travelling through the US during a zombie apocalypse, this HBO show starring Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey is a remarkable achievement, writes Stephen Kelly. L Live-action video game adaptations are hardly renowned for being serious works of art. At best, the last decade has produced well-crafted family fare, such as Sonic the Hedgehog and Detective Pikachu; at worst, the genre has found itself defined by a string of cynical mediocrities and unwatchable failures. The challenge tends to be two-fold. Video games themselves – while capable of telling compelling stories on their own terms – do not translate naturally to movies and TV shows; while the people in charge of financing or making those movies and TV shows have been known to have little respect for what makes them worth adapting in the first place. Neither of which is the case for HBO's remarkable nine-part adaptation of The Last of Us, generally regarded as one of the greatest video game stories ever told. More like this: – 11 TV shows to watch this January – How the apocalypse is being reimagined – The most controversial show of 2022 Originally released in 2013, The Last of Us is set amidst the ravages of a post-apocalyptic US, 20 years after a parasitic fungus called Cordyceps has turned most of the population into mindless monsters. It follows a hardened smuggler named Joel, played in the show by Pedro Pascal, who has been tasked with escorting across the country Ellie (Bella Ramsey), a teenage girl with an apparent rare immunity to the infection. In an interview with The New Yorker, creator Neil Druckmann recalled how, in 2014, a film adaptation fell through because executives wanted to make it bigger and "sexier", like the Brad Pitt film World War Z. The game, however, offers a more intimate story. It is a character study of astonishing depth, offering around 15 hours of gameplay. It burns dark, violent, slow; thick with an atmosphere of melancholy and dread; heavily influenced by the aesthetics of prestige television and cinema. Druckmann himself has referenced the Coen Brothers film No Country for Old Men as a touchstone. It is an essence that has been captured deftly in this small-screen iteration by both Druckmann and co-showrunner Craig Mazin, the writer behind the similarly dark and atmospheric 2019 HBO drama Chernobyl. It is a faithful adaptation in everything from look to score to feel, with the early episodes in particular following the game almost beat-for-beat. We meet loving father Joel on the day of the outbreak, as he desperately tries to keep his daughter Sarah (Nico Parker) safe from a chaotic, crumbling Texas. The infected are fast and rabid at first, but cut to 20 years later and the Cordyceps has spread from the brain to all over the body, creating an array of monstrosities. The most terrifying of which are Clickers, whose fungi-covered eyes mean that they possess super-sensitive hearing. The way they screech, the way they jerk, the way they force you to stay absolutely still, is a horror to behold. Best known for her brief turn as Lyanna Mormont in Game of Thrones, Bella Ramsey steals every scene she is in It is around this time that we're reintroduced to an older, more grizzled Joel, changed by the things he has had to do to survive. He works as a smuggler (food, ammunition, drugs) in a Quarantine Zone in Boston, where life is tough, resources are scarce and the remnants of the government – now run by FEDRA (Federal Disaster Response Agency), heavily based on real US government agency FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) – rule with an iron fist. Pascal is not as rugged as video game Joel, but his performance is raw and haunted. He is a man hollowed out by grief, who has buried his humanity and cheer beneath mounds of cynicism and violence. But Pascal is also a sensitive, soulful actor, and seeing Joel soften and thaw throughout the series is one of its great pleasures. The reason for this change is Ellie, who Joel must deliver to a group called the Fireflies – a revolutionary militia fighting to bring down FEDRA and restore democracy – in the hope that they can use her immunity to develop a vaccine. The show essentially lives or dies on the casting of Ellie, who is as playful and profane as she is endearingly obnoxious. Thankfully Bella Ramsey, best known for her brief turn as Lyanna Mormont in Game of Thrones, steals every scene she is in. Her Ellie is a loveable little terror, full of charisma and bravado, serving as the perfect foil to Pascal's stoicism. There's a real wit and warmth to the writing too, as Ellie gradually breaks down Joel's defences with her favourite book of bad puns. "Can I ask you a serious question?" she whispers in the dark, as both of them try to sleep in the woods, "why did the scarecrow get an award?" The humour is much needed in the bleak, violent world that they traverse, where people are just as dangerous as the infected. The video game, which is split into four seasons across a year, is episodic in nature, with most locations featuring a sub-plot sketched out in letters and mementos that the player finds. The show builds upon these letters and fleshes them out into fully-formed stories. And it is here, when Druckmann and Mazin are at their most audacious in terms of creative licence, that The Last of Us truly sings as television. Episode three, for example, turns a series of bitter letters between two men called Bill and Frank (implied to be lovers) into the most tender of romances. Set across two decades, it follows paranoid prepper Bill (Nick Offerman) as he strikes up a relationship with Frank (The White Lotus' Murray Bartlett), a man who stumbles into one of his many traps. What follows is a beautiful, exquisitely performed exploration of The Last of Us' central theme: that the ashes of the world are enough, as long as there is someone to live for amongst them. It is a sentiment that is turned inside-out in episodes four and five, which follow Joel and Ellie as they make their way through the aftermath of a bloody uprising against an especially fascistic branch of FEDRA in Kansas City. The superb Melanie Lynskey (Yellowjackets) features here as the chillingly violent and vengeful leader of the revolution. She wants all collaborators executed, with a special emphasis on a man called Henry (Lamar Johnson), who murdered her brother. These episodes also feature some of the show's best action sequences, including a huge set-piece involving the infected that is as grisly and gripping as any in the game. It is not a perfect adaptation. There are certain scenes early on that feel too gamey for television (such as those where Joel and Ellie are sneaking around a museum), while the latter half of the series feels like it needs one more episode to even out the pace (scenes involving the infected are strangely scarce beyond episode five). There is also the fact that no on-screen adaptation of The Last of Us will ever truly capture what makes the source material so interesting: to be immersed in that world, to luxuriate in spaces that feel haunted by absence, to be eaten alive by a Clicker. And yet, it doesn't feel even remotely controversial to call this the best video game adaptation ever made. For fans of the game, it is an adaptation of the utmost skill and reverence, yet one still capable of surprise; for people who have never picked up a controller, it is an encapsulation of the game's heart and soul – its full-blooded characters, its neat plotting, its mature themes of love and loss. It is, to finish Ellie's joke, "outstanding in its field". |
Former Goldman Sachs exec used to think a crash was inevitable. One that could wipe out the savings of investors, seniors, and retirees. There is going to be an economic crisis. But not the kind of crisis most people expect. |
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