If you only watch one post-apocalyptic TV series adapted from a violent Sony PlayStation game … well, you should probably make it The Last of Us. The brooding HBO drama from last year added even more emotional heft to what was already an artful and compelling video game about hope and humanity in a benighted world. The ecstatic reviews and slew of award nominations proved, finally, that you could spin screen gold from gaming source material.
If The Last of Us was a lofty, soul-nourishing feast, fellow game adaptation Twisted Metal is more of a whoopee cushion: loud and obnoxious yet often hilarious. It screeches belatedly on to UK screens this week after debuting in the US last summer (where it made enough of an impact that a second season has been confirmed).
Based on a gaudy PlayStation franchise that has been defunct for more than a decade, Twisted Metal takes the core concept of the games – an amped-up demolition derby between cars bristling with guns and missiles – and turns it into a daffy joyride across a lawless America.
The result is a hyperactive satire as broad as a sawn-off shotgun blast, delivered in 10 half-hour chunks. That means most of the world building happens at warp speed, cribbing from Mad Max, The Walking Dead, Snowpiercer and countless other post-cataclysm stories.
In Twisted Metal’s dystopia there may not be any zombies to deal with, but, after 20 years without wifi, humanity has devolved into trigger-happy tribes of roaming cannibals, religious freaks, humourless militia, straight-up perverts and more. Our guide to this lurid apocalypse is John Doe (Anthony Mackie), a “milkman” who survives by making risky, high-speed delivery runs between walled settlements in his extremely dope red Subaru.
For an orphaned kid who grew up alone surrounded by feral peril, the cocky, smart-mouthed milkman has developed a remarkably glass-half-full personality. He is played so winningly by Mackie that when John literally clubs a seal pup in the opening episode – followed by a smash cut to a sizzling steak being tossed into a campfire pan – it comes across as funny rather than horrifying.
Things shift into overdrive when the leader of New San Francisco (a sly cameo by Neve Campbell) offers John a gig to drive all the way across the country to retrieve a mystery item and bring it back within 10 days. This brings him into the orbit of a fugitive nicknamed Quiet (Stephanie Beatriz from Brooklyn Nine-Nine) who is doggedly pursuing her own mission of revenge.
These two charismatic leads bicker, bond and bounce between various deadly factions on their extended road trip. The parade of creepy antagonists impeding their progress include the hardline leader of a brutal police force played by the stony-faced Thomas Haden Church and a muscle-bound giant in a creepy clown mask who rumbles around in an armoured ice-cream van complete with incongruous jingle.
This is Sweet Tooth, the leering mascot of the game franchise, who is such an over-the-top presence he requires two actors to embody the role. Strapping wrestler Joe Seanoa provides the muscle while Will Arnett does the voice in a raspy register even more gravelly than his Lego Batman. This highly theatrical, cut-and-shut performance just adds to the show’s air of heightened unreality.
For a series inspired by a game about vehicular combat, there are not quite as many car chases and Fury Road-style smash-ups as you might expect. There is just as much focus on the brief detours John and Quiet make along the way, be it hiding out in a disused multiplex that remains a monument to 2002 cinema culture or helping two estranged lesbians reconnect out in the badlands.
Twisted Metal feels like a continuation of its writers’ previous work. It was developed by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick – who mined similarly zany post-apocalyptic laughs in their Zombieland and Deadpool films – and Michael Jonathan Smith, one of the team behind the grown-up Karate Kid sequel Cobra Kai, a show that gets a lot of comedic mileage out of the misadventures of a self-confident manchild. This is similarly profane, transgressive but also a little sentimental – with everything ramped up even higher. Not every line works but, in keeping with the pedal-to-the-metal theme, things barely let up: to keep the sense of momentum going there are frequent sight gags (such as an eye-popping glimpse of a homemade sex manual), cheesy 1990s needle drops (from Aqua to Hanson via Sisqó) and moments of broad physical comedy (from Tasering to projectile vomiting).
It all feels very brash and attention-seeking, like the TV equivalent of a lime-green hatchback doing late-night doughnuts in a supermarket car park. But, if you can tune in to Twisted Metal’s motormouth wavelength of childish exuberance, it is certainly a fun ride.
• Twisted Metal is on Paramount+
