“The Last of Us”: a bottle of Brunello di Montalcino, waiting for the apocalypse

Year 2023, exactly twenty years since the beginning of the pandemic which, from a simple mushroom, is quickly transforming humanity into zombies. The plot is not too dissimilar to many other stories that have tickled the imagination of screenwriters, directors, cartoonists and, obvoiusly, video game producers for decades. It is the starting point from which “The Last of Us” was born, a television adaptation of the 2013 video game of the same name which, in just a few weeks, reached exorbitant numbers, in the USA as in Italy. Produced by Sony Pictures Television for HBO, with an investment of 100 million dollars for the 9 episodes of the first season, the series revolves around the excruciating and exhausting journey of Joel Miller (Pedro Pascal), who has the bring young Ellie Williams, who did not know the world before the apocalypse, out of the quarantine zone. To their stories, so many are intertwined, but only one narrative thread is carried out independently, from beginning to end. It is the story of Bill and Frank, a parenthesis of strange normality, where human frailty and love take over catastrophism. The end, however, is near for them too, and on their last evening, they decide to treat themselves a... pre-pandemic dinner. With a good bottle of wine, whose label has not escaped the eye of the most attentive spectator: the vintage is not visible, but it is Brunello di Montalcino by Col d’Orcia.
Refined product placement? Not really, because according to US TV and communication experts it would have been a simple, tasteful choice by screenwriters Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann.