Fallout Review: a Horrific and Hilarious Must-Watch

From The Last Of Us to Silo, there’s no shortage of post-apocalyptic drama on our screens, but Fallout marks itself apart for one reason: it’s absolutely bananas.

Set in an alternate, retro-futuristic 1950s USA, the show begins with the dropping of a nuclear bomb on LA. Then another, then some more, the horrifying backdrop to an otherwise sunny birthday party in the Hollywood hills.

Flash forward some two hundred years and the bulk of humanity now lives in vast underground vaults. Or, at least, that’s what Lucy (Ella Purnell) thinks.

The story

We follow her story as she ventures into the irradiated wasteland of post-nuclear-war LA in search of her missing father (Kyle MacLachlan). Here, she quickly discovers not only has humanity been living on the surface for centuries, but life is now a lot more complicated than it ever was before.

People exposed to too much radiation have morphed into skinless, immortal Ghouls, unable to die but doomed to cannibalism unless hopped-up on copious drugs.

There’s an organ-harvesting operation set up in an abandoned supermarket, conducted by a charming robot voiced by Matt Berry, while murky bodies of water conceal mutated abominations, like a carnivorous salamander the size of a campervan.

Lucy’s sheltered naivety is the perfect audience entry point as she reacts with wide-eyed wonder at the state of the world. It’s the post-apocalypse played for laughs frequently juxtaposing blood-splattering shootouts with easy-listening tunes from the ‘30s and ‘40s.

The horror

That said, there are moments of out-and-out horror here. These frequently come from brutal militaristic faction The Brotherhood of Steel, who roam the wasteland in search of pre-war tech. Aaron Moten, Fallout’s second lead, plays the much-bullied Maximus, a low-level squire who manages to acquire a suit of power armor and live out his fantasies as a kind of Atomic Era RoboCop.

However, he gets in over his head when he meets The Ghoul (Walton Goggins), a former TV cowboy who’s been alive and kicking for over two hundred years. Now a remorseless bounty hunter entirely lacking in skin and patience, The Ghoul is Fallout’s third protagonist (despite often teetering on the edge of villainy), with the show following this trio’s interweaving journey.

Related: Fallout Season 2 Potential Filming Location Revealed

The Ghoul sums up the show perfectly in episode three, telling Lucy the wasteland’s golden rule after getting attacked by a river monster: “Thou shalt get sidetracked by bull*** every goddamn time.” It’s these unwitting excursions into the weirdest corners of the world that provide Fallout’s most entertaining moments.

The comedy

In one such moment, a roaming miscreant offers a cocktail of suspicious medicine to a man whose foot is falling off; the man’s foot is healed but he gets something much worse in return.

In another, Lucy asks for directions to a settlement from a lone figure living in a shack. “People get killed there all the time,” he says. “Had an aunt who got killed there once.”

It’s this marriage of the horrific with the hilarious that makes Fallout so endearing. It can be gruesome at times, with the show not afraid to carve off a limb or split a head in two, but there’s a lightness of touch that offsets the weighty themes of nuclear destruction.

Fallout explores what happened before the bombs fell in revelatory flashbacks, but it’s what happens after that makes the show stand out - what happens after is entertaining, inventive, and downright nuts.

And there’s more to come. Fallout season 2’s potential filming location has been revealed.

The score

4 Stars