TV review: Fallout is an explosively enjoyable videogame adaptation

Fallout. Credit: Prime Video/Amazon

Cartoon violence has become Prime Video’s favourite secret sauce — a condiment to be sprinkled on with gusto whenever the opportunity presents. 

The streamer raised the “yikes” factor to brain-melting heights with its gross-out hit The Boys — a show that skewered the superhero genre and waved the entrails about enthusiastically. 

It finds the same gory groove in Fallout, an agreeably garish adaptation of the post-apocalyptic video game franchise.

Squished heads, exploding limps, fingers chewed off … it’s a lot, and while the story clips along at pace, a strong stomach and a tolerance for bleak humour are recommended. 

Otherwise, you and Fallout are going to have a falling out.

It flows from the imagination of husband and wife Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy. 

Jonathan is the younger brother of Christopher Nolan — it is difficult to imagine a series further removed from the stately poise of Oppenheimer or Interstellar.

Or from Westworld, the HBO sci-fi thriller Nolan and Joy unveiled in 2016 and which seemed briefly set to become the new Game of Thrones — until it emerged neither showrunner had any idea where it was going.

Fallout. Credit: Prime Video/Amazon

With Fallout, Joy and Nolan appear determined not to repeat those same mistakes. It is agreeably straightforward, though with a black humour that occasionally jars and is often juvenile and tiresome. 

The action opens 150 years or so in the future. A nuclear apocalypse has bombed humanity into a Mad Max-style dystopia. 

Deep beneath the earth, wealthy one percenters live in protected vaults — but that rarefied existence comes to a crashing end for Lucy MacLean (Ella Purnell) when her father (Kyle MacLachlan) is kidnapped by raiders.

She sets off to find him, only to find herself plunged into a grand conspiracy involving a severed head and an undead “ghoul” (Walton Goggins) who has been around since before the end of the world. 

Lucy also crosses paths with Maximus (Aaron Moten), an apprentice member of the Brotherhood of Steel, who lumber around in huge suits of armour.

As with the video game, the tone is jokey, the ultraviolence mainly played for chuckles. Still, the plot moves quickly, and this barbaric future earth is vividly rendered. 

The big splurgy mess that has ended up on screen won’t be for everyone — but for those who appreciate a giggle to go with their armageddon, Fallout is explosively enjoyable.