Hello, ladies, gentlemen and those of a non-binary nature, my name is Daibhi, and like the main characters in the videogames for which this TV show is based on, I’ve come out of my vault and back to the world. Fortunately for me, this place is not the wastelands, it’s a community of awesome people who’ve kept on trucking in my absence.

I’m not properly back yet, but my time away has given me some stuff to talk about, and this is my review of Fallout: The TV Series.

Introduction

Fallout: The TV Series is based on the Fallout game franchise, created by Todd Howard. The games are made by Bethesda (and Obsidian if you’re a New Vegas fan), and they’ve been around for a very long time. If you haven’t played any of the games (and seriously, how are you here if you haven’t?), the games are set in a post-nuclear apocalypse world inhabited by humans, mutated animals and some things that come straight out of horror movies.

Videogame adaptations into live action haven’t always had the best of success in the past and I really could run up a word count on how many bad adaptations that there have been. Super Mario Brothers sucked, and Hollywood kind of accepted that videogames were not a rich source of stories for TV and movies. Then, Detective Pikachu came out and proved us all wrong. The reason I mentioned this is because the success of Detective Pikachu caught the attention of Amazon Prime. Prime then decided to adapt The Silmarillion from Tolkien’s work, and well… I like Rings Of Power, but I’m in the minority. Not satisfied with the audience scores, Amazon looked at the Fallout Series, and here I am, talking to you about it.

Plot

For those of you who haven’t played the games, fear not. Just like HBO’s The Last Of Us, there’s no need to have done so. This show introduces you to the world in a pretty unforgettable fashion, and it’s nowhere near as exposition-heavy as you might be inclined to think.

Our show starts in what we assume is the 1950’s in America. It’s not, but that will come under my criticism in a few hundred words. Cooper Howard is a former TV star whose career was limited by accusations of being a communist. He’s entertaining at a birthday party when the thing everyone is scared of happens. Turns out the nuclear scare is very real, as a mushroom cloud appears in the distance and the apocalypse happens.

Everyone who can afford to get to the safety of a Vault-Tec vault does so, as these vaults had been made prior to the events, and then we cut to two centuries later in the plot, and we see Vault number 33. It appears that all the goofy Americana has survived to a certain extent in the culture (albeit without the racism that came to define the USA in that decade). Everyone is chipper, polite and smiling. Upon my first rewatch (and without spoiling anything), this should have been the first warning sign that nothing is quite what it seems. For example, as well as surviving in the vaults, they have to have daily weapons training, and when the thing that sets the plot to happen happens, there’s a joke about trying to avoid marrying and having “nighttime antics” with your cousin. Eww.

I won’t spoil the plot, but our protagonist, Lucy, has to venture out into the wasteland to rescue a loved family member, and gets far more than she could ever bargain for in the process. But hers is not the only story we follow in this show. We have a brilliant character called The Ghoul (and I won’t spoil the twist), played masterfully by Walton Goggins. Side note here- in other writing gigs, I’ve been laughed at for pointing out how good an actor Goggins actually is, and now I’m getting apologies over that. Anyway… Goggins’ character is an outcast even in The Wasteland, and he’s basically a bounty hunter. Think Boba Fett from the good Star Wars movies, crossed with Clint Eastwood from A Fistful Of Dollars. There’s also a third character called Marcus, who’s heavily involved with a group called “The Brotherhood of Steel”, but I did promise not to spoil this show too much, so I’ll just say that a series of misadventures puts him on a collision course with the other two.

Analysis

Fallout: The TV Series is a masterfully crafted show that starts excitingly and never feels like it’s running out of pace at any point. I think it’s quite the contrast, when this show’s pace races through like someone has given life, whilst The Wasteland is mostly devoid of life. Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Graham Wagner masterfully combine horror movie levels of gore, post-apocalyptic tropes and knowing nods to 1950’s motifs (well, most of them), whilst also having a female protagonist that doesn’t feel like every other strong, female protagonist. The Ghoul is an absolute blast to watch and steals every scene he’s in, whilst Marcus’ story evens the pace out. There are plenty of memorable moments, including a fishing scene which is simply unforgettable.

There are a few issues with the show, but they’re only in the idea that some of the things we see and hear about in the show sometimes undercut the lore of the games, such as the timing of the show. It doesn’t tell you which year the show opens in, which has led to some people thinking it opens in the 1950s. Fans of the games know that this isn’t the case, and I really hope the show makes that clear in the second season of the show. The other issue with this show is the way the show takes the Westworld approach to showing you which time is which. It put a fair amount of my friends off the show, and whilst non-linear storytelling can work in videogames, I’m not sure how well it works in TV shows.

Either way, when the next season comes out, I’ll be watching with a nice bottle of Nuka Cola.

For the Gamerhub, I’ve been Daibhi and you are all legends