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Ben Schnetzer in "Y: The Last Man": Post-apocalypse without cis-men - except for one
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FX Networks / Disney +
Whether the genre designation »Post-Apocalypse« applies to this new TV series can be thought a little longer, which is basically nice. Because hardcore feminists could argue that a world in which all living beings with a Y chromosome die of a mysterious plague does not necessarily have to be a disaster scenario after decades of fighting patriarchy and gender equality.
At the beginning of the film adaptation of the comic "Y: The Last Man", this very last cis-man on earth stands at a devastated intersection in New York City and has to meet his male companion, a little capuchin monkey named Ampersand, in front of the one of a skyscraper Rescue the falling wreckage of a helicopter. All around him, male corpses lie in abandoned car wrecks, the light is gloomy, the atmosphere ominous - a classic dystopian setting, you are waiting for zombie hordes to storm through the devastated street canyons. Because of course all infrastructure collapses, power plants fail, planes crash from the sky, there is a threat of supply bottlenecks when half of humanity suddenly bleeds from their mouth and nose and falls dead.
But above all, everything collapses because key positions of relevance to the system - pilots, engineers, corporate executives, high-ranking military, politicians and scientists - were occupied by men.
The premise of the comic, which was started in 2002 by US author Brian K. Vaughan and illustrator Pia Guerra and was published in individual issues until 2008, is both clever and deceitfully complex: Can a world in which women have to cope on their own work?
Or, without machos and mansplaining, everything inevitably sinks into chaos?
Why so serious?
With their only surviving anti-hero Yorick, who by no means wants to be pushed into the responsibility of a world savior and compulsory spouse, but actually only wants to track down his missing fiancée and otherwise have his peace, they created a figure who raises all sorts of questions about gender Negotiating attributions, gender roles and traditional forms of society. The best thing about the comic "Y: The Last Man", however, was that with all the meta, horror and thriller superstructures it was a deeply humorous, all too human comedy - unlike the TV series, which has now been in place after more than a decade unsuccessful attempts at filming can be seen on the Disney + streaming service.
The deadly serious, zeitgeistically monochrome staged Ernst, with which the almost all-female team of several directors and show creator and author Eliza Clark goes to work, spoils the fun of the actually successful adaptation a little.
It is a stroke of luck that the originally planned cinema version by "Dark Knight" author David S. Goyer with leading actor Shia LaBeouf never came about and further film and series projects repeatedly stumbled upon so-called creative differences.
Ten or five years ago it would have been too tempting to ultimately reduce the multi-layered and staff-rich comic narrative to a catchy, masculine-centered exegesis of well-being.
Diverse ensemble - with a pesky fringe figure
The young producer Clark ("Animal Kingdom") deliberately puts the actors in the foreground and spreads out a panorama of the most varied ideologies and female characters.
It even creates space for the problems of trans men, which were not considered in the comic, fundamentally questions binary gender narratives and thus transports the material into the debate space of the early twenties of this century.
Diane Lane shines as Democrat Senator Jennifer Brown, who is involuntarily held accountable, replacing the late Republican US President in office.
She is also the mother of no-good Yorick (Ben Schnetzer), who fights his way through as a magician and escape artist, and his angry sister Hero (Olivia Thirlby), an ambulance driver with male issues.
Numerous other protagonists, brilliantly cast down to the smallest detail, round off a diverse female ensemble, whose only annoying marginal figure is increasingly becoming the only man.
At least in the first episodes he seems like a stubborn, egoistic child who is initially only a hindrance to the adults of the new matriarchy in managing and organizing the crisis.
Especially since its very existence must be kept secret from a dissatisfied population demonstrating in the streets.
For conspiracy myths and politically explosive: Why should the son of the new president of all people have survived?
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The actual leading actress of the series is therefore not himself, but the laconic agent 355 (Ashley Romans), who hired herself as a bodyguard for the president in the turmoil of the first weeks after the death of men, but then became Yorick's powerful minder - generally masculine connoted attributes that he absolutely does not have.
Together they embark on a dangerous journey in search of girlfriend Beth, sister Hero, his place in this reorganizing world - and of course also for the answer to the question of what immunizes him and his monkey against the epidemic.
Eliza Clark has budgeted five seasons for her "Y: The Last Man" saga, but the series, which is still a bit stiff and fluctuating between action and drama, has to be an audience success.
It could help to be a little more compassionate and humorous with one guy, the son of a Shakespeare professor by the way.
Oh, poor Yorick.
"Y: The Last Man":
Starting Wednesday, September 22nd on Disney +
