2024 has been a fantastic year for fans of science fiction and horror shows, and while it’s tricky to pick just one show as the best, critics and viewers alike are raving over Fallout. Based on the hit video game series of the same name, this Amazon Prime original aired in April and received positive reviews across the board. “Goofy when it’s bloody, glinting when it’s conspiratorial, and always looking for another way to surprise you, Fallout has a counterintuitive rhythm: there’s too much going on, but it feels right,” says critic Craig Mathieson for The Age. With season 2 already confirmed, now is the perfect time to binge-watch this highly-rated series starring Walton Goggins, Ella Purnell, Kyle MacLachlan, Aaron Moten, and others. Read on to find out more.
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What’s Fallout About?
Prime Video
Set in 2161, Fallout is a post-apocalyptic sci-fi series that fans of The Last of Us (also based on a cult video game) will appreciate. “Based on one of the greatest video games of all time, Fallout is the story of haves and have-nots in a world in which there’s almost nothing left to have,” says Amazon Prime. “200 years after the apocalypse, the gentle denizens of luxury fallout shelters are forced to return to the incredibly complex, gleefully weird and highly violent universe waiting for them above.”
1950s Steampunk Aesthetic
Prime Video
Fallout’s aesthetic is one of the show’s strong points. “It’s kind of ‘Eisenhower America,’” director Jonathan Nolan tells Rolling Stone. “[It’s] America that never went through Vietnam, never went through Watergate, that retained some of its — some people would call it ‘innocence,’ some people would call it ‘naïveté.’ Changes were made, things got better and different, but they didn’t follow the same path our world followed.”
Staying True To Source Material
Prime Video
Fans of the games will not be disappointed by the portrayal on screen. “The game has so much flexibility,” Nolan tells IGN. “They're so big, they're so epic, there's so many choices you can make and you're removing a lot of that openness with the series. But the series can do things like flashbacks that are a little more challenging with the game. So that world, that world before the war, which is so distinct, so satirical, it is so much of the flavor of these games, and the ability to play in that, I think, was incredibly exciting to us.”
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Rotten Tomato Rating
Prime Video
Fallout has an impressive 94% critics rating and 90% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes. “Told in eight bingeable episodes using a limited amount of CGI, Fallout tracks the gory, R-rated-like dilemmas of three characters… Fallout never lags for one second and dangles from one cliffhanger to the next,” says Randy Myers of San Jose Mercury News.
Video Game Experience Not Required
Prime Video
No, you don’t have to be familiar with the video games to enjoy this show. “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,” says Lucy Mangan for The Guardian.
