‘The Last of Us’ Is 2023’s First Great TV Show

I've been trying to explain the magic of 2013's The Last of Us—game developer Naughty Dog's brutalist masterpiece—to my fellow editors at Esquire. I sound like I'm drunkenly reading an entry from The Walking Dead Wiki. Road trip, but make it post-apocalypse. Zombie-like creatures are in the way. A reluctant paternal type takes a child—born with a special gift!—to the place that will save all mankind. That's the gist of The Last of Us, to which HBO said fuck-your-video-game-adaptation-curse, developed it into a TV series and cleared its coveted Sunday night slot for it to air, beginning last night. Considering the boatloads of money HBO threw at this series, my ready-to-cringe senses were tingling.   [View in Browser]( [Esquire]( [SHOP]( EXCLUSIVE [SUBSCRIBE]( ['The Last of Us' is 2023's First Great TV Show]( ['The Last of Us' is 2023's First Great TV Show]( I've been trying to explain the magic of 2013's The Last of Us—game developer Naughty Dog's brutalist masterpiece—to my fellow editors at Esquire. I sound like I'm drunkenly reading an entry from The Walking Dead Wiki. Road trip, but make it post-apocalypse. Zombie-like creatures are in the way. A reluctant paternal type takes a child—born with a special gift!—to the place that will save all mankind. That's the gist of The Last of Us, to which HBO said fuck-your-video-game-adaptation-curse, developed it into a TV series and cleared its coveted Sunday night slot for it to air, beginning last night. Considering the boatloads of money HBO threw at this series, my ready-to-cringe senses were tingling. [Read More](   [Mott & Bow's Winter Sale Has the Wardrobe Essentials You're Missing]( [Mott & Bow's Winter Sale Has the Wardrobe Essentials You're Missing]( There are serious discounts on T-shirts, jeans, and even hoodies. [Read More]( [The 22 Best Henleys For Those Days When You're Feeling Extra Rugged]( [The 22 Best Henleys For Those Days When You're Feeling Extra Rugged]( The T-shirt's cool older cousin is here to stay. [Read More](     [On the Closing of Noma, and the Unbearable Costs of an Extraordinary Meal]( [On the Closing of Noma, and the Unbearable Costs of an Extraordinary Meal]( Listen, I get it. You saw the news that Noma, that expensive restaurant in Copenhagen, was planning to close, and you snorted. Maybe you left a comment on a media platform drawing a comparison between Noma and The Menu, the goth Ralph Fiennes movie about an expensive restaurant. (I salute you, as do the 50,000 other people who left comments referring to The Menu.) Maybe you liked something on Facebook declaring that fine dining has suffered a lethal blow and that no sane person will ever again seek out the bloated, calcified pleasures of a tasting menu. And maybe you just thought, whatever, this is a restaurant far away in Denmark that serves weird food to rich people and I cannot pretend to care. Which is a totally sensible response. I get it. But if luxe dining is no longer sustainable, what will be the culinary world's real loss? [Read More](   [9 Best Coolers to Keep Your Drinks Perfectly Chilled]( [9 Best Coolers to Keep Your Drinks Perfectly Chilled]( Because there's honestly nothing worse than a surprise warm beverage. [Read More]( [The 35 Best White Sneakers to Buy Now and Wear All the Damn Time]( [The 35 Best White Sneakers to Buy Now and Wear All the Damn Time]( The style is as timeless—and timely—as ever. [Read More](     [The Ballad of Ron and Dorinda]( [The Ballad of Ron and Dorinda]( Samantha Dorinda Malone Fiegler McPherson Lopez was an only child from Cobb County, Georgia. Her many names marked the winding path that led her to a bus seat in shackles, riding through the California night in 1982. She had done six months at a state penitentiary in Georgia. Now she was headed for a fifty-year sentence in federal prison, which she assumed meant black-and-white uniforms, watchtowers, guards with machine guns. She had hoped to go to West Virginia, but her lawyer told her that Pleasanton, just east of Oakland, was where women with a rap sheet like hers ended up. [Read More](   [RUN 2023 Wall Calendar]( Follow Us [Unsubscribe]( | [Privacy Notice/Notice at Collection]( esquire.com ©2023 Hearst Magazine Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Hearst Magazines, 300 West 57th Street, New York, NY 10019