The show is being hailed as the best adaptation of a video game ever.
Middle-aged man holding a flashlight in his right hand. He looks off to the side with a worried expression. He is wearing a backpack over a light blue, possibly denim buttoned shirt. He stands near a wall covered in fungi.

Those worried about The Last of Us HBO series turning out good can now breathe a sigh of relief. The critical consensus seems to be that not only is the show good, it's downright fantastic.

While The Last of Us won't air to the public until Sunday, January 15, critics of the world were able to share their thoughts on the series. Though it seems that they were able to watch the entire first season (9 episodes), their reviews have been restricted to the first four episodes in many cases. So far, both newcomers to the franchise and long-time fans of the games have said that The Last of Us is an extremely high-quality adaptation of the source material.

Here are just a few short quotes from a few different reviews.

"The team has done an excellent job of sticking close to the source material while also breathing life into new characters along the way, creating an engaging and refreshing rendering of a popular genre story.​" - Karama Horn, TheWrap

"It doesn't feel even remotely controversial to call this the best video game adaptation ever made." - Stephen Kelly, BBC

"The Last of Us becomes at least as engrossing in its quiet moments as in its scary ones — and arguably more so when it’s just focusing on who these people are rather than the dangers they are running from." - Alan Sepinwall, Rolling Stone
At Rotten Tomatoes, the average critic score sits at 97% from all reviewers. On MetaCritic, the average is a bit lower at 84%, but that's still very impressive. Both review aggregator sites seem to have different ways that they calculate averages.

The Last of Us show is based off of The Last of Us Part 1 and The Last of Us Part 2, a game series that has been released across multiple generations of PlayStation consoles and is coming soon to PC. The games have earned countless Game of the Year awards from outlets around the world.

Set 20 years after the destruction of civilization, Joel (Pedro Pascal) is hired to smuggle 14-year-old Ellie (Bella Ramsey) out of a quarantine zone in this drama series based on the PlayStation video game of the same name.
The first season of The Last of Us is largely an adaptation of the first game with some changes here and there. It's not a 1 for 1 recreation of the first game, but many of the major beats are there. Though not yet confirmed to have additional seasons, it has been hinted that the events of The Last of Us Part 2 may expand across multiple seasons due to the larger scope of that game.

Reading some additional impressions on social media, it also seems clear that the production team pulled no punches.