What connects apocalyptic drama The Last of Us to Ted Cruz and Gores Al and Vidal?

It’s the end of the world as we know it

The Last of Us was written for screen by Craig Mazin … Photograph: HBO

We feel fine, it seems, about frequent dystopian dramas depicting our mass demise: your Contagions, your Leftovers, a Station Eleven, The Road. Now comes The Last of Us (Monday on Sky Atlantic/Now), a series set 20 years after modern civilisation has collapsed, adapted from the landmark video game. Neil Druckmann, who developed the game for Naughty Dog, has co-created the show with screenwriter Craig Mazin.

Cruz missiles

… who roomed with Ted Cruz at university, just as Tommy Lee Jones did with Al Gore … Photograph: Dave Allocca/Starpix/Shutterstock

For a while Mazin was particularly devoted to taking Twitter potshots at Republican politician Ted Cruz, the man with the most punchable face in the US, and Mazin’s former Princeton University roommate. Another notable political/pop culture college pairing was Al Gore and Tommy Lee Jones, roommates at Harvard in the 1960s.

Love stories

… in a pairing that inspired Erich Segal’s Love Story, starring Ali MacGraw, whose marriage to Robert Evans … Photograph: Getty Images

Erich Segal, author of the novel and screenplay of the classic tearjerker Love Story, has said that the tortured preppy student played by Ryan O’Neal was partly inspired by Gore and Jones, who he knew from Harvard. Jones had his first minor role in the film, which helped launch its leads, O’Neal and doomed lover Ali MacGraw, to stardom. MacGraw was married briefly around this time to Hollywood producer and ultimate mover-and-shaker Robert Evans.

Their kid stays in the picture

… produced son Josh, whose drama Glam starred Frank Whaley, who was in Pulp Fiction with Burr Steers, who wrote Igby Goes Down … Photograph: WireImage

MacGraw and Evans’s son Josh stayed in the business, as an actor/ writer/director/producer. His 1997 arthouse drama Glam featured his mother alongside Natasha Gregson Wagner (more Hollywood royalty offspring), William McNamara and Frank Whaley. Whaley is well known for his brief appearance in the golden briefcase shootout from Pulp Fiction. Another hapless figure in that scene was Burr Steers (playing Roger AKA “Flock of Seagulls”), who later wrote and directed the enjoyably arch Igby Goes Down, starring a young Kieran Culkin (with a cameo from Steers’ uncle, Gore Vidal).

A touch of Harris

… starring Jared Harris, who was also in Craig Mazin’s Chernobyl. Photograph: Getty Images

Also in Igby Goes Down is Jared Harris. After a long time in the shadow of his illustrious father Richard, he has been on a run of late, taking in Mad Men and themasterly 2019 miniseries Chernobyl, which charted the 1986 nuclear disaster. The show was the brainchild of Craig Mazin, who returns now with The Last of Us, further staring into the apocalyptic abyss. Feeling pretty psyched.

Pairing notes

Listen Since 2011 Craig Mazin and John August have been hosting Scriptnotes, a popular podcast with insights and interviews about screenwriting. Tell don’t show, it seems.

Food In The Last of Us lore, sustenance comes from tinned food and health bars, so let’s go for some Campbell’s soup – which can also take us to Jared Harris, who played the canned-soup-loving pop visionary in the 1996 film I Shot Andy Warhol.