‘Station Eleven’ should appeal to fans of ‘The Last of Us’
“The Last of Us” on HBO is turning into a mega-hit, which is great. I’ve seen the whole season, and it’s excellent all the way through. Its ratings have been growing steadily since it premiered, rising some 60 percent across only four episodes to pull in 7.5 million last Sunday. And that’s only the linear-TV number; when you factor in those who stream the episodes after they’ve run on cable, the number rises to some 20 million viewers.
Interestingly, “Station Eleven” was not a big hit when it premiered in 2021. It features a similar story line — tribes forming and anarchy threatening after a pandemic wipes out much of civilization — and it’s beautifully filmed and acted. Like “The Last of Us,” it focuses in on the bits of humanity that have survived disaster and it zeroes in on a few souls who travel around performing Shakespeare.
But it didn’t capture the same kind of buzz. We were still deep in the pandemic, so the theme might have been a turnoff for viewers. It features a lot less gunfire and action — it was based on a novel, not a video game — which might have made it less appealing to younger viewers. And it ran on HBO Max, not HBO, so there were no weekly builds — something only “appointment TV” can provide.
All that said, I just want to remind fans of “The Last of Us” that “Station Eleven” is out there. It’s a 10-part limited post-apocalyptic series that has a deeply affirmative twist, as it reinforces the value of storytelling and the powerful role of the arts. It’s there waiting for you when “The Last of Us” wraps for the season.