Amazon Prime’s Fallout is so much better than I ever could have hoped

If HBO’s The Last Of Us didn’t exist, I’d feel pretty comfortable declaring Amazon Prime’s new live-action Fallout to be the greatest video game to screen adaptation of all time. It really is that good. As it stands, second-best is nothing to sniff at.

The decision to tell a brand-new story rather than adapt any of the Fallout games immediately establishes itself as the right move. Rather than retread old ground, we’re thrown into a fascinating new corner of the beloved universe filled with original characters and, more importantly, new surprises.

This post-apocalyptic California is a bold new chapter for the franchise, one that slots right into the world of the games effortlessly. This is a show that just gets what makes Fallout work: black humour and a crap-ton of violence.

I was won over within the first 10 minutes of the show’s first episode. An explosive opening sequence - a terrifyingly tense flashback to the day the nukes dropped on America - shows us exactly where those Amazon Benjamins went. This is an epic, cinematic experience with a Deathclaw-sized budget that’s been wisely spent on perfectly recreating the retrofuturistic beauty of the Fallout games.

Executive producers Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy (of Westworld fame) wisely made the decision to give us three leads who each represent separate corners of the irradiated wasteland. There’s Lucy (Ella Purnell), The Ghoul (Walton Goggins), and Maximus (Aaron Moten).

Lucy is the standout character by far, and the one we spend the most time with in episode one. As the vault dweller who heads out into the wasteland for the first time in the wake of a crisis, she’s our conduit to this strange new world. Purnell is exceptional in the role of naive yet strangely capable hero, able to switch from wide-eyed optimism to grizzled survivalist at the drop of a hat.

The show is happy to take its time in episode one, showing us just how insular life in the vault is. Jokes about “practising with cousins” aren’t just bleakly funny in that unique Fallout way, they serve to remind us that the vaults really are isolated. Oh, and Lucy’s dad is played by Kyle MacLachlan, a man who can improve any scene by 100 percent simply by standing still and smiling.

The Ghoul gets the least amount of screentime, but he makes every second count. Goggins nails the role, all Clint Eastwood cool and barely concealed rage. It’s clear some truly awful things happened to this man (aside from having nukes dropped on him), and I suspect we’ll have our hearts broken as we learn more about his past.

If the first episode has a weak link, it’s everything involving the militaristic Brotherhood Of Steel and rookie Maximus. At this early stage in the show our three leads are kept apart by necessity, which means any moments we’re pulled away from what’s going on with Lucy or The Ghoul, we’re forced to endure the po-faced macho military bullshit of these wasteland knights.

I get the fact they’re incredibly self serious is the point, and I’m sure it’ll be more interesting to see the Brotherhood and their rigid ideology come into contact with other characters later in the series, but when it’s just them? The show very quickly grinds to a halt. It’s like being trapped in an elevator with a man whose favourite film is Jarhead.

Overall, Fallout is… well, it’s Fallout. And that really is the best compliment I can pay the show. This is a rare adaptation that not only recognises what works about the source material, but extrapolates it to offer us something completely new. Fallout 5 may be years away, but with a show this good, that wait suddenly feels a lot shorter.