A week or two ago, Prime Video dropped their new TV series, “Fallout”, which is based on the video game franchise by the same name. I’ve heard of “Fallout” in the past, as it is a very popular video game series, however, I’ve never actually played it. Even though I’ve had little exposure to these games in the past, the show itself was a wild ride, and I liked it a lot.
The basic premise of the video games is that they take place after the apocalypse, and you play as someone who locked themselves in an underground vault to save themselves. You need to venture up to the surface and explore the devastated world to find materials, save people, and see the devastation of nuclear war. The show follows a similar storyline, with a “Vault-Dweller” named Lucy who ventures to the surface after her father is kidnapped by raiders who infiltrated the vaults.
I think the thing that stood out to me most in this series was the worldbuilding. Clearly this show is backed up by a huge amount of backstory about the world in the “Fallout” games, and I’m sure there were a bunch of references to the games that more hard-core fans of the series would be able to pick up on. But the show does a great job of painting a picture for a very surface-level representation of this very complicated and interesting world.
The music in the show that was used as the soundtrack was also really interesting. A lot of it was very old-timey hits from the 1940’s and 50’s were used, and apparently this is a standard for the games as well. Artists such as the Ink Spots, Louis Armstrong, and others can be heard, as well as a bunch of original music that was made to sound like these older hits. It gives a really unique vibe to this game series and now TV show that I haven’t found anywhere else.
I think the plot of the show was good too. There was a lot going on at once at some points, but overall, they managed to keep it fairly concise. The show follows two main plot lines, one with Lucy trying to find her father and teaming up with some rather odd and unsavory folks on the surface, and the second following those who stayed behind in the vault when Lucy left, and they start to discover that the vaults may not be as safe as they originally thought. At some parts, it did start to seem like the producers were trying to put too much in at once, and I think some plot lines definitely went unaddressed by the end of the first season, but hopefully that is something that can be remedied with a second season, which has already been greenlit for production.
Overall, I think the “Fallout” TV show is excellent, and I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys watching shows with adventure and survival as core themes. Even though I’m not a fan of the video game franchise, I found it very enjoyable, as I would with any other well-written show. I would give “Fallout” a four-and-a-half out of five stars. You can find “Fallout” on Amazon Prime Video.
