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The apocalyptic setting of Amazon’s new TV adaptation of the video game “Fallout” makes comparisons to 2023’s mega hit “The Last of Us” inevitable.

But not only are the “two shows tonally distinct from each other, they’re also very differently structured”, said The Independent. The new series from “Westworld” showrunners Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Graham Wagner “picks and chooses its iconography, characters and plot from across the game series”.

And “rather than follow the source material to the letter”, said The Verge, “it feels more important to strike the right tone”, so it’s the “jokes, rather than its plot, that make it one of the most faithful – and best – video game adaptations”.

There is also no need for viewers to be “au fait” with the original, said Lucy Mangan in The Guardian. “This intelligent, drily witty, immaculately constructed series set in the ‘Fallout’ universe fully captivates and entertains on its own terms.”

It’s set amid “the blighted landscape of a nuclear-scoured California and the sickly sweet sterility of living in an underground bunker engineered to resemble a 1950s infomercial”, said The Verge.

The plot spans “several threads primarily anchored by three characters”, said Vulture. Lucy MacLean (Ella Purnell) is a “doe-eyed vault dweller” who ventures to the surface after her father (Kyle MacLachlan) is kidnapped. There’s Maximus (Aaron Clifton Moten), a sweet young man who aspires to join the Brotherhood of Steel, a “militaristic religious order”. And then there’s the Ghoul, a noseless mutant of a “bounty hunter”. 

Walton Goggins is “wonderful” as both former TV star Cooper Howard and the Ghoul, said Mangan, Moten brings such “nuance to what could easily be a one-note role” and Purnell “performs Lucy’s fall from innocence brilliantly”.

Amazon has “spared no expense” to make this “genre-bending series”, said The New York Times. The result is “satirical and self-aware, rich with ironic detail” and its “sets and costumes lovingly blend B-movie conventions from multiple genres, including Westerns, horror and Atomic Age sci-fi”. 

Ultimately, “however fans respond to ‘Fallout’, no one can doubt the creators’ commitment”.