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Fallout, an eight-part Prime Video series, is the latest in a recent swath of dramas based on post-apocalyptic video games such as The Last of Us, Twisted Metal and Resident Evil. Created by Jonathan Nolan (brother of Christopher), along with his fellow Westworld showrunner and wife Lisa Joy, it’s an original story set in the same nuclear-devastated universe established in the 1997 source franchise, and told in the game’s offbeat tone.
We begin with a prologue scene that gives an eerie glimpse of the incandescent cataclysm. From there we’re thrust some 200 years into the future and deep beneath Earth’s irradiated surface. Here, in fortified, retro-futuristic vaults, society has not only survived but thrived, as a network of communities populated by highly-educated, courteous and resourceful individuals.
But when this underground utopia is suddenly, violently disturbed from above, hitherto model citizen Lucy (Ella Purnell) — and daughter of imperilled vault leader Hank (Kyle MacLachlan) — goes in search of answers on an unsanctioned journey through the uncivilised but improbably inhabited wastelands overhead. There, Lucy, the intrepid “Vault Dweller” encounters an ageless, mutant gunslinger known as “the ghoul” (Walton Goggins), whom she soon learns is looking for the same people. So too are scientist Wilzig (Michael Emerson) and Maximus (Aaron Moten), a young soldier gone rogue from the technocratic Brotherhood of Steel militia. It’s all a bit The Wizard of Oz, but with metal-clad soldiers and undead savages in lieu of tin men and scarecrows.
While Lucy’s pixie-like cheeriness gradually gives way to subterranean homesick blues, her brother (Moisés Arias) makes some disquieting discoveries in the vaults that lead him to ask uncomfortable questions about their origin, structure and purpose. Without wishing to give too much away, the answers are eventually served with a big spoon-fed helping of exposition and a side of rather more appetising cynicism about unchecked capitalist competition and rampant corporatism, self-interest and societal stratification.
Yet if Fallout can be bleak and jaundiced at times, it’s also prone to bouts of whimsy and pulpiness which can quickly veer from enjoyable idiosyncrasy to grating gimmickry (the 1950s soundtrack, though faithful to the game, becomes very played out). Thought has obviously gone into building this future world — and using it to pick apart our present one — but the social commentary, human emotion and humour could be deeper and more penetrating. As Lucy finds out, not much good happens on the surface.
★★☆☆☆
On Prime Video from April 11
