If adapting a beloved novel into a TV series that lives up to the version conjured by readers’ imaginations is a tricky feat to pull off, then doing it with a popular video game is almost impossible. Many have tried and failed, with varying degrees of catastrophe, to create something that lives up to the immersive gaming experience. HBO’s new big-budget adaptation of The Last of Us – the first big new TV series of 2023 – might be the closest anyone’s got to pulling it off.
The feature-length first episode begins in 1969, with a portentous TV science panel about the possibility that a fungally-transmitted virus could one day wipe out humanity as we know it. Fast-forward to 2003, when that possibility becomes a sudden, shocking, violent reality. In Austin, Texas, Desert Storm veteran Joel (The Mandalorian’s Pedro Pascal) flees town with his daughter, Sarah, and brother, Tommy, in a sequence so tense you begin to think maybe you do need another zombie apocalypse show in your life.
But just when you think this is going to be The Walking Dead all over again, the action skips forward 20 years to Joel’s new life as a smuggler in a truly post-apocalyptic Boston. Consider the episode’s first 40 minutes or so a very long intro sequence – this is where the game really begins. But after the thrilling start, all the necessary exposition feels a bit like a never-ending cutscene – when Joel’s mission objectives are outlined by the leader of the rebellion you half expect a menu to pop up at the bottom of the screen with a list of options. It all pays off, of course, once Joel finally sets out on his journey west, accompanied by the mysterious and surly 14-year-old Ellie (Bella Ramsey), who may hold the key to humanity’s survival.
Between HBO’s excellent (and no longer streaming in New Zealand) My Brilliant Friend and Olivia Colman’s powerhouse performance in Netflix’s The Lost Daughter, it seems Elena Ferrante adaptations can’t go wrong. The new six-part adaptation of her 2019 novel The Lying Life of Adults keeps the hot streak going with a typically elegantly-told coming-of-age story set in 1990s Napoli. After overhearing her dad worry that she’s starting to look like his estranged sister, teenager Giovanna seeks out the mysterious Aunt Vittoria, who opens her eyes to a world beyond her comfortable middle-class existence. This is an excellent option for anyone wishing to extend their White Lotus TV vacation in Italy a little longer.
Kaleidoscope (Netflix)
When one of Netflix’s biggest shows is literally called Money Heist you’re going to need a point of difference if you want to bring another heist series to market. Kaleidoscope’s point of difference is that you can watch the first seven of the eight episodes in any order you like and it’ll allegedly still make sense in the end – but everybody’s perception of the heist will differ depending on what order they watch them in. Is it genius? Is it a gimmick? For us chronically indecisive viewers who still haven’t made it past the menu page, we may never know.
If you’ve watched enough British comedy panel shows, the names Romesh Ranganathan, Katherine Ryan and Johnny Vegas will be familiar to you. Probably not a trio you ever expected to see headlining a scripted comedy series, but here we are with the Ranganathan-written Romantic Getaway. He and Ryan play a married couple driven to desperate measures in their attempts to have a baby – desperate enough to “borrow” 50 thousand (these days probably more like 10 thousand) pounds worth of bitcoin from their dodgy boss (Vegas). This sets in motion not just a pregnancy journey, but a journey into the depths of the criminal underworld for the over-their-heads fugitives.
Romantic Getaway on Neon. Photo / Supplied
Movie of the Week: Matilda: The Musical (Netflix)
Roald Dahl’s beloved tale of child neglect has now completed the rare transition from book to film to musical to film-of-the-musical without a single dud note. In fact, some might even argue it’s become better with every iteration. If it passed you by in the blur of the holidays, Matilda: The Musical is everything you might hope it would be and more – a loud, bright, energetic romp through Tim Minchin’s songbook with some fantastic performances from the one-and-only Emma Thompson as Miss Trunchbull and young star Alisha Weir in the title role.
From the Vault: Suits (2011) (TVNZ+, from Tuesday)
It’s Harry and Meghan this, Meghan and Harry that at the moment. If you really can’t get enough of the royal saga why not go back and rewatch every episode ever made of legal drama Suits this week and psychoanalyse – or simply enjoy – Meghan Markle’s portrayal of Rachel Zane, an ambitious young paralegal at New York City law firm Pearson Darby Specter. Are there interesting parallels to be drawn between her character’s relationship with fellow lawyer Mike Ross and her real-life relationship with the Duke of Sussex? Probably not, but it’s a fun watch either way.
Podcast of the Week: Articles of Interest
When someone has a really nice voice, the saying goes that they could read the phone book and people would still listen. By the same logic, if you’re really good at podcasting you could make a podcast about any topic and people would still find it absolutely riveting. Avery Trufelman is proof that that’s actually true.
Earlier last year she produced a series of Nice Try featuring episodes about the histories of everyday objects like the vacuum cleaner, the bidet and the doorbell, each more fascinating than the last. But the best showcase of Trufelman’s podcasting powers might be Articles of Interest.
What started out as a miniseries on the popular 99% Invisible (where Trufelman cut her podcasting teeth), Articles of interest is now a standalone podcast dedicated to the topic of clothing.
If a deeply researched yet unfailingly conversational podcast about clothes sounds uninteresting, go back and listen to the episode about why women’s pants don’t have pockets and you’ll see how interesting it can be. And if you enjoy that, get stuck into the most recent series – a 10-part, Cousteau-level deep dive into the history of the ubiquitous “preppy” dress sense, which again answers a whole lot of questions you never realised you had.
