It was only a matter of time until Amazon decided to throw its hat in the ring and join the long list of companies adapting well-known video game franchises for the small screen. Given how ingrained The Rings of Power has become in the collective consciousness of fans, Amazon decided to roll the dice and go with Fallout. However, judging from the first few episodes, the streaming service might be onto something special.
Thankfully, as with The Last of Us, you don’t need encyclopaedic knowledge of the game to enjoy the show. The lore of Fallout is immense – I counted twelve sequels and spin-offs. Not that it matters. Whether a newcomer or a hardcore gamer, this clever, funny, beautifully rendered series set within the equally immense Fallout universe is an absolute delight.
In the opening scene, which takes place in 1950s America amid Cold War anxiety, Cooper Howard (played by Walter Goggins), a former Hollywood star, is performing as a children’s entertainer after being smeared as a communist. Suddenly, a mushroom cloud appears in the distance, and as the blast wave smashes the windows, the earth starts to tremble. The end times have arrived. People scatter as panic spreads through the crowd, fighting each other to be the first to enter the underground bunkers they have built in preparation.
Fast-forward 200 years, and we are introduced to Vault 33, one of several enormous underground shelters constructed prior to the war in an effort to preserve American culture and rebuild civilisation. Two other vaults are connected to this one in order to facilitate trade. Everything seems normal, though we quickly discover it is not. While they live by 1950s social mores, there’s been a slight update to comport with 23rd Century realities. It’s here that Lucy (Ella Purnell) is introduced. We get a montage of her daily activities, which include jujitsu, semi-automatic weapons training, and numerous quips about the problem of reproduction when you’re related to everyone around you, all set to a swinging Perry Como tune.
Young and desperate to start a family, Lucy makes an application to wed a man from Vault 32. The subterranean utopia is shattered when surface raiders headed by a woman named Moldaver infiltrate her wedding, murder the majority of the residents, and kidnap Hank (Kyle MacLachlan), Lucy’s father. She leaves the vault, determined to save him, and heads out into the wasteland. But the world outside is totally different from the quaint 1950s environment in which she was raised. Driven but naive, she is totally unprepared for what the outside world has in store for her.
Threats include cannibals, radiation exposure, giant sea monsters, mutated monsters, and bounty hunters. This is where Lucy first encounters the Ghoul – a heavily mutated version of Cooper who turned into a zombie after the bombs fell and now makes a living as a bounty hunter. The fascinating and darkly humorous dynamic between the two has been expertly developed by director Jonathan Nolan, who has a clear understanding of the characters.
Our final character is Maximus (Aaron Moten), an idealistic young soldier with the Brotherhood of Steel who patrol the wasteland searching for pre-war technology to rebuild the world. For various reasons, all three of them are searching for a specific item, but Lucy is particularly interested in finding it so she can trade it for her father. Others want it for more nefarious motives.
It’s all accompanied by an amazing soundtrack. The sounds of Johnny Cash perfectly capture the unforgiving new world as the camera pans over the Brotherhood of Steel boot camp. Ramin Djawadi, the Game of Thrones composer, emphasises powerful scenes that give this eight-episode series an extra layer of emotional intensity. The cast is huge and well-chosen. Whoever decided to cast Matt Berry as an organ-harvesting robot called Mr Hands deserves an Oscar.
The retro-futuristic world that co-creators Graham Wagner and Geneva Robertson-Dworet have created combines elements of a dystopian post-nuclear society with classic 50s Americana and some truly inventive gore scenes. The narrative, masterfully crafted by Wagner and Dworet, is both satirical and self-aware without succumbing to that terrible modern affliction known as meta humour. All of the characters in the story have flaws of some kind, but they all manage to grow and mature because they have faith in their convictions, sometimes even reevaluating them.
As the Ghoul and the all-American Cooper, Goggins is incredibly entertaining to watch, while Moten conveys a character who could easily be one-dimensional with a bit of substance and nuance. However, the real star of the show is Purnell, as she expertly captures Lucy’s transformation. Beautiful and quirky, she carries herself similarly to Zooey Deschannel in terms of aesthetics and style.
If I have any criticisms, it’s that it looks a little unrealistic at times. It sure looks lush and verdant for a world decimated by atomic bombs. I swear, sometimes they are wandering around the Chelsea Flower Show. That may just be the result of budget constraints. In which case, film it in Haiti.
This is one of the best shows I have seen this year. After watching three episodes, I’m blown away by Fallout.
