Early reactions to “Y: The Last Man” has been overwhelmingly positive, hailing the tv show as a trans-inclusive version. Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra’s popular graphic novel series was originally purchased by New Line Cinema in 2007 with the intention of converting it into a feature movie. The idea was quickly shelved and sold off, eventually settling at FX in 2015, which began producing a television adaptation. It was passed around around a few different showrunners before landing on Eliza Clark.
It’s probably for the best that Vaughan and Guerra’s graphic novel series ended up as an FX series because it covers over 60 issues. Yorick Brown (Ben Schnetzer) and his pet monkey, Ampersand, live in a post-apocalyptic world where a secret cataclysmic event has killed out every single creature with a Y chromosome, except for one man, Yorick Brown (Ben Schnetzer). The series follows the titular guy on his trek through a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Jennifer Brown (Diane Lane), his mother and the new president of the United States, tries to reestablish order in society at the same time. Ashley Romans plays Yorick’s bodyguard, Agent 355, while Olivia Thirlby plays Yorick’s sister, Hero.
Early reactions to “Y: The Last Man“ have begun to pour in ahead of the show’s September 13 premiere. The tv show’s timeliness has been praised by critics, as it explores a world where a devastating epidemic has wiped out half of the planet’s inhabitants while also shocking with dark humour. While the show has a compelling premise and is mainly trans-inclusive, some critics believe it veers too far into the typical post-apocalyptic territory.
Check out what critics have to say about the upcoming show:
Dave Nemetz, TV Line
Y: The Last Man does have eerie parallels to today’s headlines that cut a little close to the bone. But it’s also a smart twist on the post-apocalyptic genre, spiked with intense action, intriguing philosophical quandaries and slivers of dark humor.
Liz Shannon Miller, Collider
Occasionally the show can’t escape slipping into the grim patterns that have become common to this very specific genre of storytelling, making it feel almost like generic disaster porn at times. But that doesn’t happen too often, ensuring that the show feels fresh more often than not, with a number of compelling, haunting, scary, or even sometimes genuinely funny sequences to be found in each episode.
Caroline Framke, Variety
With so many transitions and considerations at play, it’s a wonder there’s anything to show for it at all, let alone anything as generally solid as what this version of “Y: The Last Man” offers up. For all its canny calculations, though, it also feels stuck in a single, grim gear that threatens to flatten its greater potential.
Alan Sepinwall, Rolling Stone
Clark and her collaborators only periodically seem interested in how their unique premise would impact the world in ways that are different from The Walking Dead, The Stand, or other recent shows dealing with abrupt catastrophes that wipe out large swaths of the population.
The trans-inclusivity of “Y: The Last Man” is significant, given that the graphic novel series on which it is based seems to skirt the subject. Sam (Elliot Flecther), Hero’s best friend and travelling companion, is introduced in the show as a transgender character who frequently faces bewilderment and suspicion from the ladies around him. Unlike the comics, the show acknowledges that trans males do not have Y chromosomes and would not have vanished if they did. Trans women, on the other hand, would have perished in the disaster.
The tv show correctly changes its approach to gender as audiences’ awareness and acceptance of trans people has grown over the years, as the “all men are dead” assumption featured in the comics isn’t totally realistic. Eliza Clark, the showrunner, has stated that the program would include non-binary and intersex characters, so it will be intriguing to see how “Y: The Last Man” explores the complete range of gender identity over the course of its 10 episodes on FX on Hulu.