In the 23rd Century, perky young Lucy MacLean (Yellowjackets star Ella Purnell) is quite the catch. "My reproductive organs are intact, my hygiene well-maintained," she proudly tells the councillors hearing her marriage application, and she's thrilled when the panel approves her request to wed someone she's never even seen, let alone met. However, when the arrangement doesn't work out quite as planned, Lucy finds herself leaving her home to undertake a perilous quest that will bring her into contact with would-be soldier Maximus (Aaron Moten) and The Ghoul (Walton Goggins), a dangerous bounty-hunter. All three are in pursuit of a mysterious object with the power to change a world devastated by nuclear war.
Fallout is inspired by the hugely popular video game franchise of the same name. The TV series tells an original story but is set in the same milieu as the source material and retains many of its elements, including its retrofuturistic aesthetic – much of the technology looks as though it might have been imagined by a 1950s sci-fi writer. Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan, the husband-and-wife team behind another science-fiction TV blockbuster, Westworld, are among the makers of Fallout. Todd Howard, a senior executive at Bethesda Game Studios, the company behind the game, is on the producing team, and has said that what happens in the series can be viewed as Fallout canon.
It is mostly set in 2296, 219 years after a nuclear apocalypse – chillingly depicted in the first episode's opening sequence – left the planet an irradiated desert. Lucy is a "vault dweller", one of the privileged few who live in orderly societies housed in vast underground bunkers built before the "Great War" by a powerful company called Vault-Tec. Her mission takes her outside of her vault for the first time and on to the surface, known as the Wasteland, where society has descended into lawless chaos, a kind of futuristic Wild West in which regular people – or as regular as it's possible to be in this depraved new world – coexist with giant bugs, mutated, rotting humans called Ghouls, terrifying people-eating creatures and a militaristic, heavily armed organisation called the Brotherhood of Steel, to which Maximus belongs.
It looks terrific – clearly little expense has been spared on sets and design and special effects
Across the show's eight episodes, we follow Lucy, Maximus and The Ghoul as their paths cross and uncross. We also learn something of the events before the war, and about how the vaults came into being and acquired their distinctive iconography – which includes Vault Boy, the cheery, thumbs-up cartoon motif who is Vault-Tec's mascot (fun fact: the mother and stepfather of British actor Purnell run a gym in London called The Vault).
The meandering plot doesn't really bear close scrutiny but plot's not the most important thing here. There are a number of factors that make Fallout stand out.
Firstly, it looks terrific. Clearly little expense has been spared on sets and design and special effects. The dusty Wasteland is expansive and nightmarish. The vaults look both properly lived-in and as if they could withstand nuclear attack. The power armour suits used by the Brotherhood of Steel are convincingly solid. Goggins is virtually unrecognisable as the noseless, decaying Ghoul. Appalling injuries and wounds are revoltingly realistic. (There's a lot of violence).
More like this:
- The 9 best TV shows to watch this April
- The Chinese novel that inspired Netflix's 3 Body Problem
- How a micro-budget student film changed sci-fi
Another plus is its wholehearted embrace of the game's dark, surreal humour, much of which arises from the bizarre situations that the characters find themselves in. There are demented, homicidal robots, perverted peripatetic pharmacists, amiable cycloptic vault overseers. The soundtrack ironically juxtaposes soulful, croony period music from the likes of the Ink Spots and Nat King Cole with the horrors of post-apocalyptic Los Angeles. The show also satirises capitalism and Big Tech (another irony, given that it's on Amazon's Prime Video).
Purnell is excellent as Lucy, a trusting, optimistic kind of gal, described by the makers of the show as part Leslie Knope from Parks and Recreation, part The Simpsons' Ned Flanders. At the beginning of the series, she's a wide-eyed naif who believes everything she is told about the world. Her experiences in the Wasteland, a school of very hard knocks indeed, open her eyes to a few unsavoury truths as the rads (units of radiation) tick up on her Pip-Boy (wearable computer). Goggins as The Ghoul has the swagger of a spaghetti western anti-hero and manages to convey subtle emotion despite looking like something that's spent years buried alive – which he has. Moten keeps us guessing as to whether Maximus is a good guy or not
The large cast also includes Kyle MacLachlan, Zach Cherry and Michael Emerson and there are several entertaining cameos, those of Dale Dickey and Matt Berry being especially enjoyable.
Viewers who love the games will relish the chance to discover new aspects of the Fallout universe. Those who've never played them will enjoy a vivid, brutal romp with flashes of absurdist comedy and set in an engrossing, richly detailed world.
The finale makes plain the showrunners' desire to continue. Executive producers Joy and Nolan's last big sci-fi show, The Peripheral, was canned after one season, reportedly as a result of industry strikes. Westworld was cancelled four seasons into a planned six-season run. I think it'll be third time lucky. Fallout is both totally rad and an absolute blast.
★★★★☆
Fallout premieres on Amazon Prime Video on 10 April at 18:00 PT and 21:00 ET in the US, and 11 April at 02.00 BST in the UK.
--
If you liked this story, sign up for The Essential List newsletter – a handpicked selection of features, videos and can't-miss news delivered to your inbox every Friday.
If you would like to comment on this story or anything else you have seen on BBC Culture, head over to our Facebook page or message us on X.