Fallout review: Expansive in scope and largely enjoyable for its detailed world-building, Prime Video's big-budget adaptation of the popular video game franchise aims to be the streamer's next Boys-level event series.
They used to say that television storytelling lacks stakes; for instance, characters that were killed off in season two could find ways to return in season four. Death was no longer sacred. Remember Jon Snow? But the same theory could also apply to the television industry itself. No longer does a big-budget bomb like Citadel kill a network's future plans. In fact, not only does Citadel return, but its failure encourages the production of equally expensive new projects. This week's Fallout is hardly as irredeemable as that show, but it certainly points to where Prime Video wants to be as a leading programmer in the streaming age.
Expansive and expensive, the eight-part series is based on the popular video game franchise of the same name, but seems to owe a far greater debt to post-apocalyptic cinema such as the Mad Max films and the recent Last of Us TV adaptation. Like that acclaimed HBO series, Fallout also features an epic quest across an apocalyptic wasteland, but this time, the central roles have been reversed. It isn't about a middle-aged man escorting a teenage girl to safety; it's about a teenage girl escorting a middle-aged man. Or, at least, a part of him. The most important part.
