Season one is a near-perfect season of television, and dare I say one that sets a new standard, not just for video game adaptations, but for adaptations in general.

The Last of Us is a breath of fresh air in this oversaturated genre. While many may take issue with the fact that the infected in this show are relegated to the back seats, I think it's a brilliant and welcome change. The Last of Us is not a 'zombie show', it's a show about love and loss; a show that aims to display a brutal, bleak, and heartbreaking world where these characters are forced to cling onto whatever they can get hold of to justify their continued fight to survive. The relationship between Joel and Ellie is brilliant, and their chemistry as a father/daughter type duo is second-to-none.

I've seen a lot of fans of the game complain that there's not enough action, and while it's certainly true that there's very little action in comparison to the game, I don't think that's a bad thing. This is not an action show, and video game fights do not translate well on screen. The game version of The Last of Us often sees the player (controlling Joel) mow down dozens of enemies at a time, and as a game, that works. It's necessary to have all those enemies, as action is a big part of the experience when playing a video game. But for a show, fewer action sequences make much more sense. The show feels much more grounded and realistic than the game ever did, and that's in part due to the action sequences being both far fewer, and also much more of a struggle for the characters involved. In this show, Joel is not a superhero, not like he is in the game. He can't take three gunshots and still take down five armed men, three runners, and a clicker. No, in this show, Joel is very much human; when he gets in a tussle with even one opponent, he struggles; and when he gets stabbed, he goes down and spends a long time recovering back to full health.

As far as the plot goes, the show hits every major beat that the video game did, and almost all of the major scenes are word-for-word identical to the video game counterpart. This was fantastic to see, as the game had already done a perfect job of hitting certain emotional scenes out of the park, and the show is no different. However, there are a bunch of times when the show does make some plot changes. One of the main changes is the entirety of episode three, 'Long, Long Time', which details the story of Bill and Frank's relationship. While this episode might be one of the most beautiful love stories ever told on television and was an easy 10/10 for me, it was also a huge departure from the game's plot. In the game, we never get to meet Frank; we only meet Bill. We meet Bill while playing as Joel, accompanied by Ellie. Bill is a bitter man who hates pretty much everything in the world, and his 'partner', Frank, is already gone. The show making the decision to never have Bill meet Joel and Ellie in the present timeline was a huge change, and while I was disappointed that we never got to hear the banter between Bill and Ellie in live-action, I actually think it was a very smart, and well-executed change; and one that gave us what will likely be considered by many to be the best episode of television this year.

There were other, much smaller changes throughout the show too. One example is that in the game, we never went to Jackson to find Tommy, in fact, we never get to see inside Jackson until the second game. Instead, Joel and Ellie meet up with Tommy and Maria at the hydroelectric dam. Another, even smaller change, would be how in episode eight when Ellie is hacking David to pieces with that knife, the game's equivalent scene actually has Joel find her during that, and he physically pulls her off of David to comfort her. Whether or not you like these changes is obviously going to be entirely subjective, but I will say that I found almost all of the changes to work well and make a lot of sense considering the change in medium.

Nothing will ever be an exact 1:1 adaptation of source material, that's just how things are. It doesn't matter if it's a book, a video game, or a comic book - there have to be some changes to make it work better for television. I don't agree with people who want as many changes as possible and who think that a 1:1 adaptation would be boring - I think that's silly. But I also don't agree with people who complain about every time there's a slight change to something and who then go on and complain about the show not being true to the source. This show is objectively one of the greatest adaptations ever put to screen, and I think we have the involvement of the game's original writer, Neil Druckman, to thank for that. The show hits all of the major story beats and character moments that the game does, while also expanding on various points in order to flesh things out a little more than they did in the game. If you genuinely think that this is a bad adaptation, then you must never have seen any other adaptations of other materials. You must never have read a book that was made into a movie, or any other game that was made into a show. Take 'The Witcher', for example, a show that received a lot of praise, especially for its first season. That show is literally one of the worst adaptations of source material that has ever been put to screen. The main plots literally changed and were abandoned in favour of the showrunner's own original content. Characters literally behave in ways that they never would in books or games. How about the recent Halo show? That was a bad adaptation. The Uncharted movie? Awful adaptation. But The Last of Us... this show is the furthest thing from being a 'bad' adaptation. The characters are true to themselves, the tone is a match, the plot is a match, the emotional impact is very, very close too.

I think the only thing that comes to mind when I think of things I didn't like about this season, was probably the stuff with Melanie Lynskey's character of Kathleen in episodes four and five. It wasn't that she was poor in the role or anything, but her entire character just felt entirely unnecessary, and it felt as though we spent too much time with her when we could have been spending it with Sam and Henry.

For me, the weakest episode of the season was probably episode seven, 'Left Behind'. It was still a good episode, and Bella Ramsay was great in it, but I felt as though the time spent in that episode would have been better suited elsewhere, maybe giving us more time with David's group to help flesh that plot out a little more.

Overall, this was a damn near-perfect season of television. The pacing is fantastic, the characters are compelling, the tension is fantastic, and the emotional payoff is brutal. Season two will no doubt be controversial, just as the second game was. Though, from what I read, it seems that they're planning on splitting the second game across two seasons rather than just one, so that will be interesting to see.

Overall, season one gets a 9.4/10 from me. I will update this review after future seasons.