Y: The Last Man

This is an inevitably traumatic introduction to the comic-book series’ world, but here well-drawn characters and propulsive storytelling hint that brighter days will come — if this lot can just survive the immediate post-apocalypse.

This dystopian drama isn't about the spectacle of chaos but how that chaos brings out the best and worst of those enduring it. You can say the same of any show about the end of the world, but here the reliance on character feels much more essential.

I walked into these six episodes hoping that the creators found away to adapt this as richly as “Watchmen” but entertained enough that they found something close enough to the first couple seasons of “The Walking Dead” to keep me watching.

“Y: The Last Man” works in pieces and with the establishment of its first season it’s easy to see where things could be stronger as it goes on. Episode 3 is a great piece of television. Lane, Tamblyn, and Romans are stellar and worthy of anchoring this show on their own. If only there could be a stronger balance between the authenticity and the action, then we’d really be cooking.

"Y" is a deeply ambitious, engrossing epic that doesn't quite achieve the mastery and impact of its source material but is certainly a worthy adaptation.

“Y the Last Man” purposefully does not provide easy answers, knowing that explaining the situation away would defeat the impetus of proposing such a scenario in the first place. ... It’s not the comic, but that’s probably a smart decision in 2021, the adaptation opting to mine from the bones of its societal concerns to shape a story better suited for our present.

The premiere is an inspired weaving together of creeping dread and disaster movie spectacle, laced with a quirky sense of humor. The subsequent episodes don’t quite live up to that promise, though. ... There’s a really good show somewhere in here, but it keeps getting bogged down by the weight of its own ambitions.

The show has so far proven to be a complex, engaging, and even thrilling work of adaptation. But if the writers and artists bringing it to life can’t properly grapple with the questions they seek to illuminate or push its visual dimensions further, the series won’t touch the hem of greatness within its reach.

It’s a series with a whole that is far more fascinating than its slow-paced parts. If you give it the space of a few episodes, this new drama promises great things.

It’s only at this point, five or six episodes in, that Y begins to counterbalance all the necessary, if needlessly plodding, exposition and world-building with more stimulating explorations of character and themes both gender-related and not. ... Y: The Last Man improves so much over the course of its first six episodes that its potential feels limitless. If audiences can weather its apocalypse, the show might well become something special by the time rebuilding commences.

For now, what’s most compelling is Y’s specific lens on one of the most familiar post-apocalyptic tropes: how disaster not only brings out the best in us, but also the worst. Or, put another way: Maybe men had it coming, and maybe we all did.

Once the show moves past its been-there, watched-that dystopian, scene-setting premiere episode with too many similarities to FX’s “The Strain,” “Y: The Last Man” (Monday on FX on Hulu) becomes a compulsively watchable series.

While there’s nothing especially groundbreaking about Y: The Last Man, there’s nothing truly awful either. It’s pretty much exactly the show you expect it to be, right down to its puzzle box conspiracy theories and pedestrian idea of post-apocalyptic politics.

A mystery fueling what becomes a dystopian survival tale, a chase thriller, a quest and, most fruitfully, a political allegory. If only Yorick seemed the effort. Most often, he acts like a self-involved idiot. [27 Sep - 10 Oct 2021, p.7]

It is, simply as an apocalypse drama, good enough. And there are, as the series progresses, signs of hope that Yorick will be relegated further into the background, the female characters will come further to the fore, and that it will start to exploit some of the gyno-opportunities offered by the premise. It could just do with getting there a bit faster, that’s all.

Though depicting a much different sort of post-cataclysmic world than The Walking Dead, it's often paced like that series, counting on simmering intrigue and the occasional burst of action to keep viewers engaged.

The series is often provocative, generally compelling and almost never quite as entertaining as it should be. ... Clark’s serious-minded approach to Y: The Last Man gives it grounding and thematic richness and sets up several terrific monologues to underline its speculative choices. It also makes the show talky and murky, and although the storytelling doesn’t exactly lag, it never finds the right balance with action-fueled adventure.

It’s apocalypse-by-numbers, with a good cast — see also Olivia Thirlby as Yorick’s paramedic sister Hero, and Amber Tamblyn as Kimberly, the conservative pundit daughter of the newly-deceased president — and the occasional interesting set piece, but most of it is generic at best.

Y: The Last Man is a perfectly serviceable political thriller, but the comic-book trappings that really made the panels sing just aren’t present here.

Add Y: The Last Man to the long list of comics-turned-series since "The Walking Dead" became a smash hit that have yearned to emulate its post-apocalyptic appeal. Like most of the others, this beyond-grim drama falls short, at least initially, despite a strong cast headed by Diane Lane as the US' new leader.

All of the up-to-the-minute gags may seem gratuitous to some. But most of them come off clever and resonant, often better thought-out than some of the show’s thudding emotional and action beats.

It takes itself too seriously to allow for many other emotions beyond “desperate” and “grieving.” ... Even while furiously grieving, human beings are able to laugh, flirt, and dream bigger than our circumstances might allow. “Y: The Last Man” acknowledging as much wouldn’t betray the genre, but enrich its own reality to become more recognizably poignant — and, yes, harrowing — than the monochromatic pain to which it otherwise defaults.

Some intriguing ideas and individual performances can't save Hulu's latest from feeling dated and languid.

At best, the new FX on Hulu drama (debuting Sept. 13) takes the Brian K. Vaughan/Pia Guerra source material in intriguing new directions. Too often, though, it's a dutiful adaptation, turning the comic's eccentricity into a familiar genre wallow.