HBO’s new show, based on PlayStation mushroom zombie game The Last of Us (coming soon to PC), has got off to a great start. According to HBO, Sunday night’s premiere drew 4.7 million viewers, both on TV and streaming on HBO Max.
This makes The Last of Us the second most-watched HBO series debut since the first episode of Boardwalk Empire aired in 2010 (4.81 million viewers), although the gap between second and first place is huge: The first episode of the Game of Thrones prequels House of the Dragon was viewed by around 10 million people on its first night last year. Perhaps it is unfair to compare even a very popular game series like The Last of Us to anything from Game of Thrones: George RR Martin’s books alone have sold The Last of Us and its sequel by tens of millions of copies and the Game of Thrones finale surpassed broke HBO records with 19.3 million viewers when it aired.
What struck me as odd was that a show based on a hit game series couldn’t top Boardwalk Empire, a historical drama I don’t recall discussing around the coffee machine in 2010, but HBO reasonably points out Points out that the 2010 premiere of Boardwalk predates the widespread adoption of HBO streaming apps (the now-defunct HBO Go app, launched the same year) that allow viewers to watch episodes at their leisure. “Sunday night viewership for an HBO series typically accounts for 20 to 40 percent of the show’s total gross audience per episode,” according to the network. (I also forgot that Boardwalk Empire starred the incomparable Steve Buscemi, and wasn’t aware that the first episode was directed by Martin Scorsese, so a secondary lesson here might be that I should check out Boardwalk Empire.)
Regarding The Last of Us, opinions on the PC Gamer team are mixed. We’ve criticized it for being an overly straight-forward Prestige TV adaptation of a game that itself Prestige TV emulated, with no new observations or interesting twists that set it apart. But there were some serious defenses of the mainstream premium cable apocalypse in our usual morning staff meeting today: It has great sets and performances, and The Last of Us is entertaining source material. It might not be particularly daring, but how much television is? I’m more interested in that than at least the Halo show.
Speaking of Paramount’s Halo series, it set their own attendance record for Paramount Plus last year. The network hasn’t released an exact number, but the audience for Master Chief’s TV debut was in the same 5 million mark as Joel and Ellie’s. Netflix also said that The Witcher (which is based on the books and not the games, just technically) was its most-watched debut season when it released in 2019. We also liked Netflix’s Cyberpunk 2077 anime, Cyberpunk Edgerunners, the success of which helped boost sales of CD Projekt’s RPG, and we’ve raved about Netflix’s Castlevania show in the past.
Aside from the last Resident Evil show that was bad, and also the other recent Resident Evil show that was bad, we seem to be on the verge of a golden age for video game TV adaptations.
We’ve recently heard that Netflix has series from Assassin’s Creed, Splinter Cell, Far Cry, Horizon Zero Dawn, Tomb Raider and Gears of War in development, mostly animated. AMC is working on an Alan Wake show, Amazon is making God of War, NBC is making a twisted metal show for streaming service Peacock, and even weirder, there’s Hunt: Showdown, Driver, and System Shock shows in of development for a new streaming service called Binge.
The response to The Last of Us that we’ve released so far hasn’t been particularly enthusiastic, but the overall critical response to the show has been tremendously positive, with the BBC and others calling it “the best video game adaptation ever”.
New episodes of The Last of Us air Sundays at 9 p.m. Eastern on HBO and stream on HBO Max. The season finale is scheduled for March 12th. The Last of Us Part 1, a remake of the 2013 game, is coming to PC on March 3rd.
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