Fallout Review

Fallout works because it grasps that the games are a comedy first: a wasteland of mutants and bandits filtered through a 1950s American optimism that the bombs never dented, and the show plays that tone exactly. The production design is superb, with vaults, power armour and the Los Angeles ruins built rather than rendered, and the violence is cartoonish and sudden in the right way. Ella Purnell's Lucy, a naive vault girl who learns the surface fast, and Walton Goggins's Ghoul, a bounty hunter with two centuries of grudges, are both excellent and Goggins is the show's engine.

The season's structure, three protagonists converging, is handled well, and the vault conspiracy at its centre is a satisfying use of the setting's deepest lore. The Brotherhood subplot is the weakest of the three and Maximus the least interesting lead. The ending sets up a second season with confidence. It is the best game adaptation on television alongside The Last of Us, and the funnier of the two.