The Last of Us review: A post-apocalyptic drama that can't decide if it's an adaptation or a replay

The biggest TV shows do awful things to Pedro Pascal's face. Game of Thrones squeezed his skull to pieces. The Mandalorian helmeted him in dad's nostalgia. A high-fatality horror series sounds even nastier, so it's a nice surprise how much The Last of Us depends on the actor's kind, un-gouged, visible eyes. He stars as Joel, a violent smuggler chaperoning sassy Ellie (Bella Ramsey) across a ruined America. Their undead odyssey is overly familiar and can play like a video game with just the talking parts. Pascal brings a lightness to gory trauma, aging himself with unkempt gray fuzz, mumbling an ah-reckon Texas twang. He looks like he would be really bummed about killing you.

In 2003, Joel's a regular-guy contractor and a single dad. A fungal infection rapidly spreads through humanity, turning victims into mad chomping killers. These cordyceps creatures are essentially, though not technically, zombies. Civilization collapses, so J.K. Rowling never finishes Harry Potter but also never tweets. 20 years later, Joel's living grim in Boston, one of several quarantine zones run by a residual U.S. authority called FEDRA. Beyond the walls linger monsters who used to be people and people who are the real monsters.

Liane Hentscher/HBO Bella Ramsey and Pedro Pascal in 'The Last of Us'

Joel and his partner Tess (Anna Torv, always welcome) receive a bodyguard assignment from the Fireflies, a rebel group. Young Ellie is a typical doomsday adolescent masking loss behind perpetual middle-finger snarl. She's also a genetic miracle. A cordyceps bite usually turns a person into an invulnerable beast defeated only by brain trauma: Zombie stuff. Somehow, Ellie survived an attack. Her DNA could save the world, if Firefly scientists out West can analyze her immune system. It's a whole continent of danger from here to there, plus a personality problem. Joel don't talk much. Ellie won't stop bantering. Can a gruff badass get along with a precocious kid?

The answer is obvious, which represents a bigger problem. You've seen The Last of Us already, whether you played the hit 2013 video game or ever watched a zombie anything. The very good game was very obviously inspired by 2006's Children of Men, another cross-country quest about a sad guy shepherding a snarky Chosen Teen between murderous totalitarians and murderous rebels. George Miller's filming a Mad Max, AMC's expanding The Walking Dead, and a new Planet of the Apes arrives next year: All these current facts were also true a decade ago.

What's different with this Armageddon? Star power, an HBO sheen, a music budget. The scope is vast, for better (soaring vistas, extensive cityscapes) and for worse (one of the premiere's two prologues is pointless). There are big-deal guest leads. The action is fine, functional. One episode completely shifts the game's canon, but some scenes get recreated shot-for-shot. That may work best for newbies, or fans who prefer adaptations barely adapted. It contributes to the feeling of watching someone else's replay.

There's a Walking Dead problem, too. AMC's franchise has lasted forever enough to explore so many post-breakdown societies: walled earthy commune, remnant-government fascism, obvious cult, surprise cult. Without spoiling anything specific, Last of Us doesn't reinvent any wheels there. Joel and Ellie go various places populated by a charismatic leader and barely named followers. The undead action beats are clockwork: quiet footsteps, sudden attack, a head getting shoot-stabbed, that uneasy post-assault pause when someone realizes they got bit.

The fun with any formula is the variables. The game stood out for sheer gorgeousness. Co-directors Bruce Straley and Neil Druckmann built Eden in ruins, flooding empty downtowns with reforested green. It was serene, the High Line without tourists, in a year when World War Z went shaky-cam and "dark" was in the titles of bad Star Trek and Thor sequels. Druckmann executive-produces the TV series with Craig Mazin, a former spoof artist who nailed somber historical terror with 2019's Chernobyl. They're aiming for humanist zombie horror, which means the cordyceps don't appear as often as they might. The game made merry with the "clickers," blind echo-locators who react to noise. A thriller could have fun with that — cripes, A Quiet Place made a universe out of it — and the show also reveals its creatures share a hive mind.

Alas, those concepts fade to undead mush. The character-first focus is admirable, and there are moments of sweetness with the main duo. But their dynamic feels obvious; does Joel need an origin-sized hole in his heart? And I wish Ellie didn't come off like the last of the grungies, prone to outright Bart-isms like "No way! Check me out, man!" and "Dude, you got to go up in the sky!" I think you're meant to be surprised by her toughness, but everyone knows Ramsey was Thrones' tween badass. She gets trickier material in a late flashback, and Last of Us comes to life in breakaways like that. The lovely third episode tangents off the main characters and features two actors whose arrival made me yelp with glee. An unexpected situation rewrites the game's canon and plays out in an unconventional form that ignores the survive-somewhere-new level structure.

Nothing else in the nine-part debut season pops like that. It's never clear why the game's 2013 outbreak has been transposed to 2003. Cultural references feel frozen from earlier: A-Ha, Linda Ronstadt, Mortal Kombat II, cassette tapes. I worry the shift is just a cheat code, allowing Mazin and Druckmann to avoid dramatizing what social media does to pandemics (a confounding situation every Earthling now knows.) On the other hand, the cast is swell — Melanie Lynskey, Storm Reid, Scott Shepherd, Rutina Wesley! — and the way Pascal smiles when Joel finds Chef Boyardee just kills me. The finale edges in an unsettling direction, and future seasons could offer more episode 3-style experimentation. Right now, The Last of Us is less sensitive than sentimental, an end-times fable where the apocalypse is a bonding experience and guns are better anti-viral defenses than masks. Grade: B-

Related content:

• See Rutina Wesley in an exclusive Last of Us photo

• The Last of Us trailer reveals new characters created for show, more monsters

• The lasting legacy of The Last of Us: Game makers explain the hype around HBO series

• Clicker bait: The Last of Us trailer reveals Yellowjackets star Melanie Lynskey and the infected