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.