I’m a fan of sci-fi TV and movies, well.. to a degree. I loved Blake’s 7 as a kid, Dr Who, a few of the StarTrek series such as TNG and Voyager, though surprisingly not the original series. I loved the first four Alien movies and Prometheus, but everything since has been a disappointment. What I haven’t had time for is the whole zombie/ghoul stuff that I think gets mislabelled as sci-fi.
So, I was a bit surprised that I really loved series one of Amazon Prime’s Fallout even thoughit has ghouls and irradiated monsters all through it.
Based on the wildly successful video game of the same name, (which I’ve never played), this weird show is set two hundred or so years after nuclear war has devastated the planet.
There are four main types of human’s left:
Vault Dwellers who inhabit underground bunkers and live in a hierarchical and idealistic society; Wastelanders who are basically the remnants of humans who survived the war and now eke out a pitiful existence; Mutants/ghouls who basically ingested too much radiation and are now freaks who live seemingly forever who eat others and cause mayhem; and finally The Brotherhood of Steel, a violent ruling elite who meld religion and technology and think they are god’s chosen people.
There are also plenty of irradiated animals that also prey on people such as a giant, and I mean really giant, salamander that leaps out of rivers and swallows people whole.
Incidentally, the technology of the old world and in the vaults has a kind of late 50s early 60s vibe but some of it is more advanced than in reality.
Sounds fun huh? Yeah it is.
In that first season, Lucy (Ella Purnell) is an innocent and ridiculously optimistic rule-following vault dweller whose father is in charge of their society. When it is overrun by raiders and her father is kidnapped she goes to the surface to find him. There she runs into The Ghoul (Walter Goggins) who, ravaged by radiation has managed to live for two centuries without a nose. He hunts valuable old tech and has flashbacks to his 20th Century life when he was B Grade actor called Cooper Howard. Lucy also encounters and forms a connection with Maximus (Aaron Moten) a squire in The Brotherhood who has ambitions beyond his servile role.
During this first season, we learn more about the hidden history of the vaults and what led to the bombs falling and devastating the earth. The real story is complex and dirty. The plot jumps around a lot and multiple story lines, both present and past, weave before our eyes. There is plenty of violence and gore.
The show is very weird and yet, so compelling. This is probably because the special effects and staging are top notch and the characters so well thought through and expertly played by their respective actors. The alliances formed and sometimes broken are so unlikely they actually give a real sense of authenticity to a world that is so surreal.
So, now comes season two and I have had the honour of being among the first in the world to see the first two episodes.
This time, it was in a movie theatre, not my usual 50 inch TV. I’m not giving too much away, and indeed I haven’t revealed the ending of season one in case you haven’t seen it. Let’s just say, it is revelatory and makes a lot of sense as to what happened in the past.
In these first two eps of the new season, there are still mysteries to be solved and though we know more, it feels like there is something still being kept from us. Some great mystery even bigger than what we’ve already seen. The characters feel pretty much the same in terms of their basic nature, but the, shall we say ‘nicer’ ones, such as Lucy are struggling to maintain their values when confronted with the horrors of the world they now inhabit.
As with the first season, the stories jump seemingly haphazardly between the past and present and from different locations and characters. It feels a bit frenetic, especially on a huge cinema screen, but letting that wash over me was very satisfying. Of course, having seen only two episodes, there are so many new questions and many of the older mysteries only partly answered so I am keen to watch the rest.
The violence if anything has been ratcheted up a notch and frankly some of it made me laugh because it was so obviously gratuitous but I think that is part of the show’s appeal. I get a sense it doesn’t really take itself too seriously. There are moral lessons and a critique of our current society wrapped up in the oddness and the violence but there is also a strong sense of humour and irony as well.
Ultimately this show is a gory surreal morality story that takes much of our modern day society and its history and forces it back in our faces. It’s an unflattering look at the excesses of our consumerism and cruelty and the barbarism of bullying and the power plays that underpin our world.
Fallout is clever, witty, bleak and an absolute delight.
