The Last of Us; The Feud

“These are dark days of video game adaptations, with the new Minecraft movie going down about as well as a brick chucked through a window. But The Last of Us season two more than restores the balance. Bloody, packed with bombshells and brimming with tragedy, it takes all that was best about series one and cranks it up to the absolute maximum.”
Ed Power, The Telegraph

“Is The Last of Us a great TV show or just a great adaptation of a video game? In truth, it sits somewhere between these positions. Its origins are an unspoken constraint but showrunner Craig Mazin (and Neil Druckmann, the architect of the game, who co-creates this adaptation) have done a fine job translating for the screen. The world has ended over and over, on screens big and small, but it has rarely been as plausible – or compelling – as the barbaric wasteland in the second season of Last of Us.”
Nick Hilton, The Independent

“The Last Of Us is based on a video game, and it shows. Action sequences are a dizzying blur, as though you’re watching the screen while a teenager jiggles and waggles the PlayStation handset. The rest is horribly static. Characters stand in groups, only their heads moving, as they talk back and forth.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“This season has a narrower scope than the first, without the standalone, digressive episodes that were some of the original run’s best. It’s all about Ellie becoming her own person, which happily means a lot more of Bella Ramsey’s wonderfully punchy portrayal of a damaged young soul fighting for autonomy.”
Jack Seale, The Guardian

“Players of the game will spend this series waiting for the heartbreaking, game-changing plot twist that I won’t spoil here. For now, it’s worth basking in the safety of the compound – Joel and Ellie might be going through a rough patch, but that’s nothing compared to what faces them in the forthcoming episodes. You have been warned.”
Emily Baker, The i

“The Feud is a strange cove set to the sort of intrusive plucked strings music you get in a whimsical retro crime drama set in a Cotswold village. Yet it doesn’t have any of the gentle humour. Judging by the opening scenes and three houses up for sale, things may or may not end in a bloodbath. And yet … this domestic noir in a street full of middling semis is so knowingly naff I am strangely hooked.”
Carol Midgley, The Times

“The Feud begins with a clichéd set-up and then compounds the error by telling the story in an entirely hackneyed manner. This is Meccano drama that spends the first episode assembling the constituent parts and then unsubtly bolting them all together. If you haven’t seen any television, read any books or indeed done a kitchen extension yourself in the last five years it’s possible that the burgeoning feud in The Feud will be at least mildly intriguing. It is a modern truth, for example, that people banging on about the life-enhancing qualities of kitchen islands can indeed inspire murderous thoughts. Otherwise, though, this is a feud best left behind closed doors.”
Benji Wilson, The Telegraph

“The Feud has soap opera levels of dialogue and acting, with everyone from Emma’s overbearing solicitor to paranoid Nick portrayed in the broadest strokes. But it nevertheless paints a fascinating picture of an outwardly blissful middle-class neighbourhood that is, in reality, a hotbed of illicit affairs and passive-aggressive parking. The murder plot will no doubt prove to be as over the top as anything you’d expect from 5 – but in its depiction of suburbia as gossip-fuelled purgatory, The Feud feels right on the money.”
Ed Power, The i