Television series

Fallout

Name: Fallout
Genre: Drama, Action, Science Fiction
Released: 2024
Cast: Walton Goggins, Ella Purnell, Aaron Moten, Moises Arias, Frances Turner

Post-apocalyptic

Fallout is a glossy, violent, darkly funny post-apocalyptic adventure that adapts the video game series into prestige television. It's a story about power, survival, and the absurd hierarchies we build to feel safe. Gorgeous production design, strong performances, and a genuine appetite for spectacle make it genuinely exciting to watch. It's for anyone who likes their dystopias with a sense of humour and their heroes complicated.

TVMaze rating

4.0

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you like post-apocalyptic stories where the savagery is matched by sharp satire and a stubborn streak of hope, and you enjoy a lead who is hopelessly out of her depth.

Skip it if you want a tight, fast ride, since the pace is unhurried and the early episodes spend real time establishing the world before the plot really moves.

What it asks of you: Settle in for sixteen episodes of roughly an hour each, with violence that lands hard and a tone that swings between brutal and cheerfully absurd.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

The Mandalorian2019

A lone wanderer in a dangerous world, picking up a ward and learning to care. Sharp action, great character chemistry, and a production design that makes every frame worth pausing. The template Fallout clearly studied.

But Slower than you might expect, with stretches where not much happens. If you're here purely for spectacle, you'll hit some meandering episodes.

Westworld2016

Elaborate world-building, ambition to match, and a genuine mystery about what reality means in a constructed space. It asks big questions while delivering impressive action sequences. Stylish and strange.

But Becomes increasingly baroque and sometimes collapses under its own mythology. The later seasons get more interested in being clever than coherent.

Sweet Magnolias2020

Ensemble drama with real emotional weight, where damaged people try to protect each other. Warm, funny, and surprisingly moving. It knows how to make you care about characters before breaking your heart.

But Primarily a soap-opera structure with all the melodrama that entails. If you're allergic to emotional intensity and relationship drama, this isn't your show.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Fallout

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Arcane: League of Legends2021

Both use visual spectacle and humour to explore how people survive in systems that weren't built for them. Same DNA about vault dwellers versus the wasteland: who gets to be safe, and what that safety costs.

Animated series about class warfare, friendship, and how systems grind people to dust. Staggeringly beautiful, emotionally intelligent, genuinely funny. Each character is given real depth and agency. Animation that makes live-action jealous.

But If you hate anime-adjacent art styles or won't watch animation, you'll never know what you missed. Some dismiss it on medium alone.

Severance2022

A high-concept world that feels genuinely strange and original, matched with excellent acting and directing. Tense, beautifully shot, morally complex. Each episode makes you desperate to know more.

But Deliberately slow and withholding. Demands patience and rewards it, but if you want immediate clarity, you'll be frustrated.

Chernobyl2019

Epic, harrowing, and brilliantly constructed. Examines how systems fail and how people behave under apocalyptic pressure. Jared Harris is extraordinary. Every scene feels consequential.

But Relentlessly bleak and heavy. No lightness, no mercy. If you're watching for fun rather than art, this is a slog.

The Last of Us2023

Post-apocalyptic storytelling that earns its emotional devastation. Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey create real intimacy in a dying world. Character-driven, gorgeously filmed, occasionally funny.

But Grief is the actual plot. If you're looking for triumph or uplift, you'll be disappointed. Some episodes are aggressively sad.

For All Mankind2019

An alternate history where the space race never ended, packed with meticulous world-building and genuine stakes. Optimistic without being naive. Great ensemble cast, smart writing, genuinely addictive.

But Sprawling across decades with frequent time jumps. Requires attention and patience; you can't watch passively.

Raised by Wolves2020

Visually stunning science fiction about survival, faith, and parenthood on a hostile planet. Weird, ambitious, unafraid to be strange. Ridley Scott directing. Gorgeous and genuinely unsettling.

But Narratively messy and sometimes incoherent. The mythology doesn't always cohere, and the show clearly had plans it couldn't execute.

Andor2022

A Star Wars show for people who don't usually like Star Wars. Character-focused, politically intelligent, patient. Tony Gilroy directs like it matters. Genuinely thrilling espionage television.

But Entirely joyless and relentlessly grim. No fun, no colour, no levity. If you want adventure or wonder, this strips both away.

Killers of the Flower Moon2023

Both examine power hierarchies in brutal detail. The Vault-Tec corporate structure and Overseer mythology are echoes of how real institutions preserve themselves through ideology and selective truth. Both ask: who decided you don't deserve to survive?

Scorsese's late-career masterpiece about greed, power, and the systematic erasure of indigenous people. Methodical, mournful, angry. Slowly reveals itself as a crime story about an entire people. Leonardo DiCaprio does some of his best work.

But Three-and-a-half hours, deliberately paced. Deliberately uncomfortable. Scorsese is interested in how complicity spreads, not in making you feel good.

BoJack Horseman2014

Both are obsessed with how people construct identities and narratives to survive. BoJack tells himself stories about who he is; Fallout's wastelanders wear their Vault-Tec jumpsuits like character armor. Both ask whether you can change what you've already become.

A comedy about a washed-up actor in a cartoon world that becomes a profound meditation on self-destruction and the possibility of change. Hilarious, then devastating, then both at once. Animated with real beauty. Genuinely one of the best shows ever made.

But Anthropomorphic animals doing dark comedy. If the premise sounds silly, you won't give it a chance. Also: relentlessly about failure and regret. Not cathartic.