The following review contains spoilers for the first episode of Fallout.
The first thing to note is that, as with The Last of Us, there is no need for any viewer to be au fait with the source material of Fallout, Amazon’s new competitor in the field of hit video game adaptations (though a fan of the game who watched it with me assures me that there is much to enjoy in addition to the basic narrative if you are).
For newcomers such as me, this intelligent, drily witty, immaculately constructed series set in the Fallout universe fully captivates and entertains on its own terms. It opens in 1950s America, at the height of the cold war and the “red scare”, with former TV star Cooper Howard (Walton Goggins) reduced to appearing at a children’s birthday party after being tarred with the pinko brush. A mushroom cloud appears on the horizon, the blast wave hits, the apocalypse arrives.
All those who can afford it rush to the secure vaults they have had built in preparation. We cut to Vault 33 two centuries later, by which point they appear to be doing very nicely. All the naivety of the 50s and the better parts of its mores – politeness, consideration, cooperation, modesty and restraint – have been preserved, albeit with the occasional twist. Like daily weapons training, and chipper approaches to the avoidance of marrying one of your many cousins.
The underground idyll is shattered when they are brutally raided by surface dwellers led by a woman called Moldaver (Sarita Choudhury). Vault Overseer Hank MacLean (Kyle MacLachlan) is kidnapped and his daughter Lucy (Ella Purnell) defies orders from the remaining Council and leaves the Vault to find him. As a wide-eyed believer in the Golden Rule (do unto others as you would have them do unto you), she is wildly unprepared for the array of delights surface-dwelling holds. It’s not like she can disguise herself effectively either. As one gnarled resident of the desperate nearby town of Filly says – “Clean hair, good teeth, all 10 fingers. Must be nice.”
Surface threats include, but are not limited to: giant co*ckroaches, godawful sea monsters (the Gulper’s innards haunt my dreams), radiation poisoning, strung-out survivors, fanatics of various kinds, puppy incinerators and cannibalistic Fiends. The Brotherhood of Steel try to control the Wasteland but you can’t help but feel, committed warrior faction though they are, that they are on a losing wicket. The Brotherhood is divided into Lords (in battered Iron Man-esque suits), Squires who attend and hope to become them and Aspirants training as Squires. Aspirant Maximus (Aaron Moten) is our guy and we follow him as he rises from bullied victim to rogue Lord. His mission? Acquire the severed head that Lucy also needs to find, containing a chip that Moldaver wants (and which Lucy hopes to trade for Daddy MacLean).
The biggest threat of all, however, is the Ghouls, and one in particular – a noseless, mutated remnant of Cooper Howard who is also hunting for the head and the bounty on it. He is the first to cross paths with Lucy, and oh the fun we have! By the end of a fishing trip, she’s in such a state that if she were to return to Filly, they would probably accept her unquestioningly as one of their own.
Co-creators Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Graham Wagner somehow manage to combine traditional post-nuclear apocalypse tropes with semi-ironic takes on 50s motifs, B-movie conventions and horror-level blood and gore (and work in plenty of Easter eggs and other pleasures for gamers). It’s a perfectly paced story that is both funny and self-aware without winking at the camera, undercutting our increasing emotional investment in characters who reveal – and sometimes unexpectedly redeem – themselves layer by layer. If I tell you that the organ-harvesting robot is voiced by Matt Berry, that the Ghoul’s meeting with a long-lost, rotting colleague almost made me cry and that neither element jarred with the other, perhaps that will convey something of the triumphant balancing act that is maintained throughout the eight-episode series.
It is, if you’ll pardon the pun, an absolute blast. Goggins is wonderful as both the unsullied golden boy Cooper and the wretched Ghoul, Moten brings such nuance to what could easily be a one-note role and Purnell performs Lucy’s fall from innocence brilliantly. The growing mystery back at Vault 32, as Lucy’s brother Norm (Moises Arias) becomes suspicious of the origins of the murderous raid and the supposedly benign Council that has protected them all these years, adds yet another strand to the story and ratchets up the tension even further. In short, for Fallout, I’m all in.
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Fallout is on Prime Video
