HBO’s new show based on PlayStation fungal-zombie game The Last of Us (that is coming soon to PC) has had a healthy start. According to HBO, Sunday night’s premiere drew 4.7 million viewers both on TV and streaming on HBO Max.
That makes The Last of Us the HBO series’ second most-watched debut since the first episode of Boardwalk Empire aired in 2010 (4.81 million viewers), though the gap between second and first place is huge: the first episode of Game of Thrones prequel House of the Dragon was watched by about 10 million people on its first night last year. Perhaps it’s unfair to compare even a hugely popular game series like The Last of Us to anything other than Game of Thrones: George RR Martin’s books alone, The Last of Us and its sequels, have sold tens of millions of copies, and the Game of Thrones finale broke HBO records 19.3 million viewers when it aired.
What did strike me as odd was that a show based on a popular game series couldn’t top Boardwalk Empire, a period drama that I don’t recall being discussed around the coffee machine in 2010, but HBO reasonably points out that the premiere of Boardwalk in 2010 predates the widespread adoption of HBO streaming apps (the now-depreciated HBO Go app launched the same year), which allow viewers to watch episodes at their leisure. “Sunday night viewership for an HBO series typically represents 20%-40% of the show’s total gross audience per episode,” the network said. (I also forgot that Boardwalk Empire starred the incomparable Steve Buscemi, and didn’t realize the first episode was directed by Martin Scorsese, so a secondary lesson here might be that I should watch Boardwalk Empire.)
When it comes to The Last of Us, opinions on the PC Gamer team are mixed. We’ve criticized it for being an overly straightforward prestige TV adaptation of a game that itself imitated prestige TV, without new observations or interesting deviations that made it special. But there were some serious defenses of the mainstream premium cable apocalypse at our usual morning staff meeting today: It’s got great sets and performances, and The Last of Us is entertaining source material. It may not be particularly daring, but how much TV is that? If anything, I’m more interested in it than the Halo show.
Speaking of Paramount’s Halo series, it set his own viewership record for Paramount Plus last year. The network didn’t release a specific number, but the audience for Master Chief’s TV debut was in the same 5 million ballpark as Joel and Ellie’s. Netflix also said that The Witcher (which is based on the books and not the games, just technically) was the most-watched debut season when it released in 2019. Netflix’s Cyberpunk 2077 animeCyberpunk Edgerunners, whose success has boosted sales of CD Projekt’s RPG, and we have gushed about Netflix’s Castlevania show in the past.
Apart from the recent Resident Evil show that was bad, and that too other recent Resident Evil show that was bad, we seem to be at the dawn of a golden age for TV video game adaptations.
Last we heard there are Assassin’s Creed, Splinter Cell, Far Cry, Horizon Zero Dawn, Tomb Raider, and Gears of War shows in development at Netflix, mostly animated. AMC is working on an Alan Wake show, Amazon is doing God of War, NBC is doing a Twisted Metal show for streaming service Peacock, and even stranger, there’s Hunt: Showdown, Driver and System shock shows in development for a new streaming service called Binge.
The response to The Last of Us we’ve published so far hasn’t been super enthusiastic, but the overall critical response to the show has been extremely positivewith 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 streaming on HBO Max. The season finale is scheduled for March 12. The Last of Us Part 1, a remake of the 2013 game, will release on PC on March 3.