n the kind of quirk that wouldn’t be out of place within its realism-on-the-edge-of-surrealism vibe, the 2015 post-apocalyptic TV sitcom The Last Man on Earth has just become the most philosophically relevant cultural product on the planet. The show’s premise considers the future of humanity when the vast bulk of its number has been taken out by an uncontainable, invisible global virus. The series is the brainchild of comedian and Saturday Night Live alumnus Will Forte, who was its star, writer and first showrunner, and its genuinely original characters, unpredictable plots and quirky tone earned it a cult following. The cult, alas, was not enough to sustain production: it was cancelled after four seasons, at the height of a game-changing, end-of-season cliff-hanger, in 2018. This rude interruption to its narrative in no way diminishes my recommendation to watch it. There’s no need to be offended – or be frightened – by its premise, either. The conceptual triumph of Forte’s show is that the tragedy of the event is enhanced, rather than trivialised, by the comedy taking place in its aftermath. Its survivor characters may be clowns who trip over the imperfect humanity of themselves and one another, butThe Last Man on Earth treats the dead with solemnity, and against this, the haplessness of living people who consistently struggle to manage the heroic is tender and powerfully life-affirming. The protagonist is Forte playing the contemporary western everyman, Phil Miller. He’s a burrito-loving casual office temp from Tucson, Arizona, who believes himself the sole survivor of the pandemic. Returning alone to his home after criss-crossing the country painting the words “Alive in Tucson” on highway billboards, Miller takes up residence in an abandoned mansion. He surrounds himself with treasures looted from art museums to department stores, feeds himself microwaveable meals and frozen food, and spends time masturbating, assisted by a mountain of porn. When his toilet breaks, Phil can’t fix it – so he shits in an unused swimming pool instead. But as garbage as well as sewerage accumulates around him, the materialistic Phil learns painfully that treasures cannot sate his loneliness. Believing that his prayers for a companion are unheard, Phil attempts suicide, but is foiled by the appearance of another survivor, in the form of his personality opposite, the grammar fascist and “qualified notary”, Carol, played by the matchless Kristen Schaal. As Phil and Carol negotiate the obligations of survivorship on a silent and denuded world, a couple of other survivors do appear. Suddenly, a swimming pool full of shit is the least of Phil’s problems, as well as the perfect metaphor for the consequences of his own careless and indulgent behaviour. But Last Man on Earth is neither bleak, nihilistic slapstick, nor a mere sitcom of what happens when the “sit” you are in is potentially, well, the last one on earth. Underneath the pratfalls occasioned by Carol’s nuttiness and Phil’s selfish and often outright shameful behaviour, Forte’s gentle allegory is one that encourages his characters to overcome a default to consumerism and materialism and develop a greater collective moral capacity. While the survivors raid supermarkets in an ever-widening radius for corn chips, they’re gradually confronted by the paucity of their amassed skills to sustain even a tiny new society. The anti-expert tenor of our political times is explored to dire conclusion when medical challenges and ecological disaster strike and the closest thing the group have to anything like a doctor is a chef. Meanwhile, the show makes a sly point that the value of coveted items – from art to antiques, cars to homes to cash to bags of cocaine – rapidly depreciates when there is no audience to envy possession of them. While the action of Last Man on Earth is driven by the choices of adults ever complicating their relationships – even with no external provocation to do so – the show has a structural rhythm that allows it to indulge scenes of sublime comic weirdness. False eyebrows, “friendship kisses”, a hallway full of singing fish, artificial insemination performed in colour-coded body suits and repetition of the words “jean art” are amongst many, many bonkers highlights in its unfolding story. As our own pandemic traps us indoors, with our own tiny societies and existential thoughts, this is a show that brings pathos, humour and no small amount of philosophical comfort to worst-case scenario considerations. Jean-Paul Sartre’s insistence that “hell is other people” is given sharp rebuttal. In Last Man on Earth’s world of depopulated office towers, empty hospitals and horizons on fire, the powerful suggestion is precisely the opposite.