Read the books a few years ago, it definitely suffers from "male sci-fi protagonist" tropes but it was mostly a pretty dry story about young guy observing the collapsed society and eventually settling down with a group of people and his observations of his life, then the lives of the children, and his eventual death.

There really weren't that many parts where there was human/human conflict and those were pretty short subplots that were quickly resolved.

It was like "The Road" but without any cannibals.

I've read the book years ago, and I don't really remember there being much by way of that (could be wrong of course). Most of humanity dies, and then the survivors... just find each other and build lives again. None of the zombie apoc stuff where "humans are the real horror" and it's actually happy they're dead, felt like it was more about the appreciation of human resilience (and the excellent public infrastructure that keeps ticking along for years post-disaster).

Assuming I remember correctly, it'd be a slooooow TV series. Not surprising they'd fuck around to make it deeeeep - adaptations of such old sources are super susceptible to being hollowed out to wear as a flesh suit.