Podcasts
‘The Last of Us’ – Season One Review [Safe Room Podcast]
Before checking out this week’s episode on The Last of Us, check out last week’s discussion celebrating the 10th anniversary of BioShock Infinite!
I’d be lying if “fool’s errand” wasn’t my first thought upon hearing about HBO’s plan to adapt The Last of Us into a series. I mean, who wants that kind of responsibility, let alone dealing with the inevitable shitstorm of precisely the type of comments we’ve come to expect when anything is adapted. And when we’re talking about one of the most beloved horror titles of the last decade, I think “fool’s errand” is a pretty justified gut reaction.
And yet, with every new announcement regarding creatives and casting being attached to the project, that notion quickly left my mind. I mean, after all, how nervous can you be with Craig Mazin of Chernobyl fame and The Last of Us’s co-director and writer Neil Druckman are involved?
Then a new series of worries arise. Will recasting beloved characters retain what made them special in the first place? Will the source material be adapted faithfully? And if not, are the narrative or directorial changes justified? These questions and more we unpack in this week’s episode, in which Neil and I are joined by returning friend of the show, and GameSpot Producer, Jake Dekker, to unpack Season One of The Last of Us in its entirety.
Be sure to check back next week for March’s edition of The Inventory: Safe Room’s monthly review show. This month we’ll be chatting Resident Evil 4 remake, Diablo IV beta impressions, Dredge, Fatal Frame / Project Zero: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse, The Dark Pictures: Switchback VR, and more! –Jay Krieger
Safe Room is a weekly horror video game discussion podcast with new episodes every Monday on
iTunes/Apple, Sticher, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and Linktree for additional streaming services.
Feel free to follow the show and hosts on Twitter:
Maybe you haven’t thought about your good friend Sweeney Todd in a while, or maybe you have. The 2007 movie is a bit of a memory, though a fond one – it has a healthy 86% on Rotten Tomatoes, for what it’s worth. But 2023’s Broadway revival starring Josh Groban, who your mom thinks is “so talented” (she’s right!), was enough of a hit that its run was extended.
It appears we’re in a bit of a Sweeneyssaince.
For the uninitiated, Sweeney Todd is the story of a barber who kills his customers and disposes of the bodies by passing them off to pie shop owner Mrs. Lovett, who uses them as a special ingredient. But there’s more below the trap door.
Sweeney Todd isn’t just a late 70s musical that turned into a movie; it started as a penny dreadful called The String of Pearls: A Domestic Romance (author unknown), told week-to-week in the 1840s. Penny dreadfuls were essentially fiction zines featuring serialized stories that were usually horror-based and cost a penny, leading to the very literal nickname.
The String of Pearls differs from the more well-known Sweeney Todd plot in that it follows the investigation of a missing persons case that leads to the reveal of Sweeney and Mrs. Lovett’s arrangement, as opposed to the more modern iteration which treats audiences to the duo hatching their homicidal plan and then giving the worst haircuts ever. What a delightfully wild reveal that must have been if you were a reader in Victorian London after weeks of wondering what had become of the missing sailor carrying a string of pearls to deliver to a lovely girl.
Kristen and Will discuss the history and future of Sweeney Todd and works inspired by it this week on Guide to the Unknown. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts to get a new episode every Friday.
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