First I'm going to state a few biases/preferences: 1) I love movies (always have), but I hate video games (always have). I knew nothing of this one.

2) I prefer character-based drama and comedy, in which plot points hardly matter, except to the extent they reveal more about the characters. I liked both of the main characters in this series.

3) Unlike a lot of reviewers, I didn't dislike Bella Ramsey's portrayal of Ellie. Unlike some others, I *did* like Pedro Pascal's turn playing Joel. (I first noticed him a few years ago in the Netflix series "Narcos." Check that out to see his impressive acting range.) Good support was provided here by Anna Torv, the star of "Fringe," as Tess, Lamar Johnson as Henry, and Nick Offerman as Bill.

4) If not for the post-episode commentaries, I wouldn't have known that Merle Dandridge, who played Marlene in the series, had voiced the same character in the video game a decade ago, or that the woman who had voiced Ellie in the game, Ashley Johnson, would be playing Ellie's mother, Anna, in the series. Both stood out.

The reviews seem pretty well divided between "a flawless masterpiece" and "a woke piece of crap." I come in at neither end of the spectrum, but a bit closer to the former than to the latter. And in direct defiance of most reviewers, one of my favorite episodes was the so-called "filler" episode that featured Offerman (gamers refer to anything not directly from the video game's plot "filler," based on 2 mediums being identical🤦🏻). The other one deemed "filler," episode 7, wasn't as good, but not as bad as some would have it. Apparently, the meaning of "woke" is "anything that puts hard-core conservatives to sleep." I'm not sure if that meets the formal definition of "ironic," but it meets my definition of "idiotic."

In conclusion, Season 1 of "The Last of Us" is about love, what it means to us humans, and the crazy, mixed-up, sometimes indefensible things that we are ultimately willing to do for/about it. If that sounds to you like a worthwhile subject, then you may like and be moved by this show. If that sounds too boring and not bloody enough to satisfy your expectation of adapting a game to series TV, then go ahead and skip this. 8/10.