Sky drops episode one of The Last of Us on YouTube for free

The Last of Us

HBO’s critically-acclaimed scripted series The Last of Us has been one of the early breakout hits of 2023. To capitalise on its popularity, the show’s UK broadcaster Sky is showing the first episode for free on the Sky TV YouTube channel.

A post-apocalyptic drama based on a popular Sony Playstation game, the first episode of The Last of Us recently became the second-biggest US drama debut on Sky Atlantic with overnights (one million) beating the debut launch of Game of Thrones. Tens of thousands of fans have fuelled the buzz by staying up to watch new episodes as they launch at 2am every Monday – a bigger number than for last year’s House Of the Dragon.

Sky launched its YouTube channel sampling exercise on Friday January 27, giving audiences an opportunity to sign up to its service ahead of the hotly-anticipated third episode, which scored an impressive 9.4 rating on IMDb. Empire Magazine described episode three as “one of the finest hours of TV in recent memory” with The Guardian commenting; “it might be one of the finest episodes of TV you will see this year.”

YouTube is becoming increasingly significant as a platform for sampling high end content. There have been examples of subscription services gifting live sport on the platform recently, though scripted content is more of a novelty.