What’s the name of the show? The Last Man on Earth  When does it premiere? Sunday 1 March at 9pm EST on Fox.  So, is he really the last man on earth? It appears so. Well, he’s at least the last man in North America. Australia could still be full of people and he wouldn’t know.  That means there is no one else on this show? That’s what Fox wants you to think, but I’m here to tell you that, yes, there are other people in the cast.  Why does the network want you to think there is only one dude? Wouldn’t that make the show boring? Yes, it would, but I think the marketing is trying to make people curious so they tune into the one-hour premiere.  What is this show? After a virus wipes out the entire population of North America, Phil Miller (Will Forte) is the last man living on earth in Tuscon, Arizona.  What’s the show’s pedigree? Former Saturday Night Live star Forte created the idea for the show and wrote the pilot. (But he also created the MacGruber movie, so take that into consideration.)  What happens in the premiere? Phil Miller travels all 50 states (and Canada and Mexico) looking to see if there is anyone still alive after an unnamed virus wipes out the population. He leaves signs everywhere saying he’s alive in Tuscon. After determining there is no one else alive, he returns to his hometown where he takes over a mansion, fills it with priceless art, and then starts living like an animal. He puts spray cheese in $10,000-a-bottle wine. He cuts a hole in the diving board and uses the pool as a toilet. He sets up a pyramid of aquariums in a parking lot and then throws bowling balls at them. With no one around, he becomes a drunk, slovenly mess who misses having other people around. Just as he’s about to kill himself, he meets Carol (Kristen Schaal) a woman who insists on stopping at stop signs even though there are no other cars on the road. She moves in next door and the two clash, even though she is sure they are supposed to repopulate society.  It’s just going to be the two of them on the show? No, some other women will show up over the course of the season, including ones played by January Jones and Mary Steenburgen.  Is this show any good? Never has the question of longevity plagued a show more than this one. How do they keep it fresh and interesting? By introducing new characters every few episode? But that sort of betrays the entire premise of the show. There are probably a lot of stories you could tell with two people, but will they be captivating? It’s an interesting conundrum, but it might be one worth sticking through.  The way the Phil unravels when left alone on Earth is not only slyly funny (wait until you see his margarita pool) but also fascinating. We see how much of our reality is constructed by the rules of society and ideas about how we treat other people. When those things are gone, how do we react? Phil has chosen to let his baser nature take over, filling his house with trash and spending his days creating a giant Jenga tower. Carol, on the other hand, holds fast to the old rules, trying to bring back a society that is clearly gone. Their clash is really one that we all would go through in the same situation. Hold on, I just thought of something …  Yes? What if Carol isn’t really there at all? What if Phil is just going to start imagining all of these women to get him through life? What if she is just an externalisation of the force within him that makes him want to behave, like a superego writ large? What if he really is the last man on earth, as the title says, and Carol is just some hallucination his unconscious mind is making so that he’ll stop shitting in the damn pool?  Interesting. You were saying? Oh yes, the insight that Forte has into what it would be like to be living after an apocalypse is strangely insightful and usually played for laughs, but there are a few instances where Phil’s pathos comes out, like when he imagines being surrounded by his family on his birthday. More of that would turn this show from a good, high-concept comedy to something that could be truly revolutionary. Forte showed us his acting chops in Nebraska and it would be great for him to show them off.  Which characters will you love? Well, we kind of have to love Phil because he’s the only man left on earth. But he is a likeable guy. Even when he’s destroying stuff and blowing up cars for no reason, he never does anything to be a jerk. He’s just indulging in the kinds of things most of us would do with no restraints. Carol is great too – Schaal gives her uptight streak a wackiness that could only come out when there are only a couple of souls left on the planet.  Which characters will you hate? The great thing about the end of the world is there is no one left to hate.  What’s the best thing about it? While The Walking Dead and other post-apocalyptic shows go for a sort of realism with abandoned cars and dead bodies scattered all around, Last Man on Earth presents the end of the world as totally antiseptic. There are no other cars on the road or in the parking lots. There is no trash on the street. People left their houses in tidy order. It’s entirely unrealistic, but it adds to the desolation that Phil must feel living in this landscape.  What’s the worst thing about it? That this show is on Fox. It seems far too weird and with too niche a sense of humour to connect to an audience on the large scale like it needs in order to stay on a broadcast network. This show seems like it could really thrive somewhere expectations would be lower, like FX, Comedy Central, or even AMC if they wanted to get into the comedy business.  Should you watch this show? Again, the longevity of the show is its biggest issue, and that won’t be a problem if no one watches it. But maybe viewers should give such an original, odd, and human comedy a chance while it’s still around. So, sure, go ahead.
What would you do if there’s no-one else around? In this imaginative show, Will Forte stars as a man indulging in his baser nature – until someone else turns up