I’m happily making my way through Amazon’s Fallout series, though I haven’t had time to binge the whole thing yet. It’s wonderful. I couldn’t be more delighted with the show, which is a faithful adaptation of Bethesda’s popular series of post-apocalyptic RPGs.
I’m glad that the creators of the show chose to tell a new series set in the Fallout universe rather than a straight-up adaptation of one of the games. Sometimes that works—HBO’s The Last Of Us did an admirable job adapting the first game in that series—and sometimes it doesn’t. While it’s based on the books, Netflix’s Witcher show comes to mind. They might have been better off following the lead of video game developer CD Projekt Red, which chose to tell new Witcher stories in the video game adaptation rather than adapt the books.
One of the best things about Fallout the TV show is that it’s very accessible whether or not you’ve played the games. Yes, fans of the games will notice a lot of fun stuff from the source material, but even if you’re a total newcomer, you can watch and follow along without any issues (similar to how Netflix’s Arcane is great whether or not you’ve played League of Legends).
The story revolves around three main characters 200 years after a nuclear war basically destroyed everything, driving some survivors into underground bunkers called Vaults. Ella Purnell plays Lucy MacLean, a Vault Dweller who—through unfortunate circumstances—leaves the relative safety of Vault 33 and travels to the surface on a life or death mission.
She’s joined by Maximus (Aaron Clifton Moten) a squire in the secretive Brotherhood Of Steel, Power Armor-wearing knights who roam the land looking for lost technology. Maximus is almost as green as Lucy, venturing out on a quest he’s not very well prepared to tackle.
Finally, rounding out the main trio, we have Walton Goggins as The Ghoul, a gunslinging bounty hunter and mutant who’s managed to live for well over 200 years. We learn more about his past as celebrity Cooper Howard through a number of flashbacks.
I won’t spoil any more than that in this review. When I’ve finished the entire series I’ll post a spoilery follow-up. For now, I just want to urge anyone sitting on the fence to give this series a shot. It’s great fun, with plenty of humor, action and mystery and its creators clearly put a lot of effort into making it true to the game universe, while also being inventive with their storytelling.
Amazon’s Blunder
My one problem with this show is that it will soon fade from the public conversation entirely thanks to Amazon dumping all eight episodes onto Prime Video at once. I know many people like to binge-watch their TV these days, but it’s genuinely a huge disservice to the show, its creators and cast, and to fans to release everything at once. Amazon often drops a couple episodes at once and then airs the rest weekly.
Shows like The Boys and The Rings Of Power have followed this weekly model, and when those shows air they’re talked about for weeks. The Netflix model almost always means that a show gets a bunch of buzz for a week or two and then disappears completely. No water-cooler talk on Monday mornings like we had for Game Of Thrones and so many great shows of the past. Remember the live-action Avatar? That dropped in February and then almost completely disappeared. Meanwhile, The Last Of Us on HBO generated weeks of buzz and excitement.
On a more personal note, I enjoy weekly releases because I like writing weekly recap-reviews and it’s fun to talk about each episode individually as they air with readers. When everything drops at once, everyone watches at their own pace and it becomes much harder to write individual posts for each episode.
We’ll still be talking about Shogun next week (when the series finale airs) but Fallout will be yesterday’s news. Instead of six or seven weeks watching (and coming up with fan theories like we did for Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy’s HBO show Westworld) we’ll all just move on with our lives. And that’s a real shame, because Fallout is genuinely great.
What do you think of Fallout? Let me know on Twitter and Facebook.