The Last of Us

Post-apocalyptic settings have long haunted our fictions, reliably serving as an evocative canvas for artists to work out all manner of questions about the human experience while staging genre thrills along the way. In HBO’s The Last of Us, a faithful adaptation of the critically-acclaimed Naughty Dog video game, the road trip odyssey of Joel and Ellie (played by Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey) functions as a recursive meditation on love and loss—and how love is capable of changing people, for good and for ill. Video game enthusiasts have been grappling with this story, including its rich and complicated ending, for more than a decade. But in the hands of showrunner Craig Mazin, who worked in collaboration with Neil Druckmann, a co-director on the original game, this adaptation extracts new layers from the text that expand its meaning. Look no further than “A Long, Long Time,” the series’ standout third episode featuring superior performances by Murray Bartlett and Nick Offerman, which imagines what a life of love and fulfillment can look like at the end of the world. For its creative achievements as a feat of cross-media translation, and for setting a new, high watermark for the artistic possibilities of video game adaptations, The Last of Us is recognized with a Peabody Award.