A Ghoulishly Great Walton Goggins Commands Prime Video's Fallout Adaptation

The trick to adapting a successful video game into a TV series is twofold. First, you have to convince fans that this version of their favorite virtual world is worthwhile even without player agency. Second: convincing everyone else this isn't some cynically made tie-in or complicated expansion of geeky esoterica.

It's not an enviable task, either way, which is why it was a smart move on Bethesda Softworks' part to trust Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan with adapting their post-apocalyptic series Fallout for Prime Video. At least anyone skeptical about this take on the franchise won't be able to say the pedigree doesn't have smarts or ingenuity.

It's also generous of Joy and Nolan, co-adaptors of Westworld for HBO, to hew as closely to the game as possible. Todd Howard, who directed Bethesda's last couple of Fallouts and serves as an executive producer here, is likely aware that anything short of a complete 1:1 transference from consoles to streaming will result in pedantic fan outcry. Still, it's wild to see how much effort went into reproducing the scorched-earth/nuclear-pop aesthetic of Fallout down to the last detail, from the intricacies of its iconic Power Armor design to the number of fins on a Nuka-Cola bottle. (Four, in case you were wondering.) This absurd (and absurdly expensive) level of fidelity doesn't leave much room for creativity or innovation, but it'll be appreciated by die-hards and go unnoticed by the uninitiated.

Even the soundtrack pulls needle drops directly from the games. Fallout begins at a ritzy birthday party set in the Before Times, where Cooper Howard (Walton Goggins) plays cowboy for a bunch of spoiled rich kids. We're regaled with a rendition of "Orange Colored Sky" sung by Nat King Cole, a featured tune fans will surely recognize from Fallout 4 (if not Mr. Cole's discography), a playful choice — not to mention a lively way for Fallout to begin massaging its themes of classism and crisis denialism into the woodwork.

We see Cooper suffer insults from beer-swilling rich dudes as their wives switch off the news to focus on the party, but Coop seems to know what's up, and through him, we do, too. These folks represent the other one-percenters who have bought their safety in a premium Vault-Tec shelter; they stick their privileged heads in the ground even as the worst-case scenario is broadcasted the world 'round. The bombs are dropping, and tomorrow is canceled, but at least everyone will go out in style and comfort.

When Fallout clicks, it goes off like a Gieger counter. Led by showrunners Geneva Robertson-Dworet (Captain Marvel) and Graham Wagner (Portlandia), the eight-episode season seeks a tonal sweet spot between social commentary, hero's journey earnestness, ultraviolence, and crackerjack humor. It generally strikes a wobbly balance, though the show hits a more confident stride after the first batch of Nolan-directed episodes.

It's only when Nolan et al. actively attempt to make everyone happy that Fallout shows strain. In an effort to convey and maintain the game's satirical register, the dialogue can often get clunky, as it does in moments when Goggins has to gargle ghoulish one-liners such as "Is this an Amish production of The Count of Monte Cristo, or just the weirdest circle-jerk I've ever been invited to?" (Another quip that lacks finesse: "Now that is a very small drop in a very, very large bucket of drugs.”) Visually, Nolan and the directors that follow him are often more interested in showing off how they've translated the game's melee havoc to live action, which means fight scenes with gun- and knife-play usually devolve into incoherently blocked slow-mo action.

The series's three unique and appealing leads help stabilize matters. The most captivating among them is Goggins, who starts out as a washed-up TV cowboy struggling to make ends meet for his little daughter and 200 years later winds up a noseless bounty hunter ghoul roaming the Wastelands that were once California, USA. Goggins has a natural easiness that makes him the ideal escort through the world as it existed before the bombs went off and Vault-Tec came into fashion. Interestingly enough, it's before Cooper becomes a computer-enhanced badass that Goggins can flex the moral complications of his character that made his turns in Justified and The Shield so memorable.

There's Lucy (Ella Purnell), a bubbly schoolteacher who enjoys a high-functioning life ensconced in Vault 33 until an unexpected incident compels her to leave the nest and explore the irradiated Wasteland as the viewer's surrogate. As she takes some time to acclimate to its brutal conditions, Lucy often loses the sense of agency seasoned Fallout players might expect from their main Vault Dweller. Yet Purnell brings a charming, wide-eyed sense of wonder — and, later, teary disillusionment — to the proceedings that is difficult not to appreciate.

As Lucy's idyllic post-apocalyptic life hits a snag (an inevitability, considering the oxymoron), we pivot to the rough-and-tumble life of Maximus (Aaron Moten), an aspirant in the militaristic Brotherhood of Steel. Low on the ladder in terms of the sect's chivalric hierarchy, Maximus, despite his heroic name, takes so much abuse from his teachers and fellow students you'd think he had a permanent "Kick Me" sign on his back. He also digs latrines while Dane (Xelia Mendes-Jones), his one friend in the world, becomes anointed to the rank of "squire." Later, when Maximus gets his crack at the big time, he's stuck lugging around a giant bag of gear for a scummy Brotherhood Knight like an underappreciated caddie.

Maximus and Lucy are two kids from opposite sides of the tracks, and their perspectives allow the viewer to appreciate the Californian Wasteland of Fallout more comprehensively. Maximus and his Knight search for an Enclave escapee (Michael Emerson), while Lucy searches for her father (Kyle MacLachlan, whose special agent good looks fit snugly in Vault-Tec gear), and their paths take peculiar, often colorfully violent detours. (Among these pitstops is a memorable scrape with a polite organ-harvesting robot voiced by Matt Berry.) All parties involved in this dystopian brouhaha eventually converge on a mysterious raider named Moldaver (Sarita Choudhury), who holds secrets to Vault-Tec's more sinister dealings that even long-time Fallout fanatics may find revelatory.

But Fallout isn't just character-specific plot twists and lore expansions. It has things to say about the bleak commodification of doomsday (which is rich, coming from Amazon) and explores these ideas in a way that should be satisfying, if a bit close to the mark, for those who keep up with the news between streaming events. For others, simply watching these characters wander through a painstaking recreation of the series's iconic Vault-Tec shelters, with every window, sliding door, and bolt exactly where they're supposed to be, will make it hard not to shake the feeling that Fallout is playing them for a change. Because it is, with more deftness than it ever needed.

Fallout Season 1 premieres as a binge release April 10 on Prime Video. Join the discussion about the show in our forums.

Jarrod Jones is a freelance writer currently settled in Chicago. He reads lots (and lots) of comics and, as a result, is kind of a dunderhead.