The first season of The Last of Us was a solid exercise in good television. He understood the foundations of his genre, led them to the construction of two characters and developed from a kind of fatalistic positivism: Joel’s ability to lower barriers and love again did not prevent him from having to face a hostile world, devastated by a fungus. And, after the nine episodes that became an audience phenomenon, here are five proposals for those who feel orphaned and are looking for interesting series, different but with similar themes:
The Italian writer Niccolò Ammaniti adapted his own novel: a post-apocalyptic story where humanity, after developing a virus that kills people when they reach adulthood, is only shaped by children. Anna’s ability to convey poetry through the death of innocence, bucolic beauty and a sense of childish cruelty makes this work one of the most interesting cases of apocalypsitis.
It is an ideal series, moreover, for those who were obsessed with the construction of the character of Ellie (Bella Ramsey) in The last of us: here are many minors who show the edges of having grown up in a horrifying reality and having to normalize the violence.
An interesting element of The last of us is his way of explaining the reason for his mushroom-apocalypse: cordyceps, a real mushroom, finds a way to develop in humans until it kills the person and controls their nervous system. The scientific basis is laid out early on in the first two episodes so that the start of the epidemic is not a central mystery to the narrative. And what other series poses apocalyptic scenarios? A challenging future, where Scott Z. Burns (Contagion) draws on scientific research to show how climate change could evolve between 2039 and 2070, that “in the meantime” between today and a civilization in near ruins.
Its cast is breathtaking. It features Meryl Streep, Edward Norton, Kit Harington, Sienna Miller, Diane Lane, Marion Cotillard, Forest Whitaker, Matthew Rhys, Indira Varma or Keri Russell to explore plausible scenarios such as how fires will devastate the land, the consequences of the rise of the sea or air pollution, the capacity of capitalism to try to take advantage of the situation or the disappearance of the fauna of the oceans. Watch out for this interview we did with Burns and Dorothy Fortenberry, writer and executive producer of the Apple TV series.
Los 100 can be described, especially in its early days, as an adolescent attempt at Lost. Humanity has spent two centuries in space trying to survive on a space base after the Earth was rendered uninhabitable by a nuclear apocalypse. Seeing that they do not have the resources to continue in space, the leaders send the problematic adolescents to the planet: it is an a priori suicide mission but they want to find out if, by chance, it is possible to live on the planet again. Of course, the youngsters soon discover that they are not alone.
The screenwriter Jason Rothenberg, who adapted the novel by Kass Morgan, knew how to emancipate himself from his reference series with a story that, with a premise typical of Lord of the Flies, became a brave story: the heroine Clarke (Eliza Taylor). , every time he seems to enter a dead end, he has to make impossible decisions. Hence, it is a good substitute for The last of us (and with seven seasons and 100 episodes behind it).
Those who have seen Station Eleven perhaps thought that the start of The last of us had already seen it: it shows how the population of a large city, Chicago, dwindles in a matter of minutes after the spread of a virus. Here, however, there are no zombies: Patrick Somerville conceives a humanist dystopia about the human condition in the face of an epidemic that practically exterminates society, based on episodes that take their narrative licenses to paint a global portrait.
And, whoever is looking for fiction that makes them rethink human nature and their way of processing trauma and loss, here is a genius of contemporary television: this Damon Lindelof’s The leftovers that imagines what would happen if, suddenly, 2% of the population disappeared without a trace (and without explanation).
Justin Theroux, Margaret Qualley, Amy Brenneman, Regina King, Liv Tyler and Carrie Coon lend themselves to this deep and unclassifiable exercise that, after an irregular first season but with brilliant episodes, was able to polish its full potential with the hiring of Mimi Leder as director. . It has only three seasons and, in addition, it closes wonderfully.
