Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy’s sci-fi series “Fallout” brings the eponymous video game to a wider non-gaming audience. More importantly, though, it manages to bring in a fresh new voice to the post-apocalyptic genre of stories, be it within television series or a film format. And because Prime Video dropped all the episodes at once, no matter how dense the show’s storytelling structure is, binge-watching is essential. To satiate the exploration of a new form of dystopia, where human beings would have to navigate treachery amidst the environment and within themselves, here are six shows like “Fallout” that you can binge –
6. The Last of Us
One of HBO’s most critically acclaimed dramas of last year and arguably one of the great videogame adaptations (like “Fallout”), “The Last of Us” is set 20 years into a pandemic caused by a mass fungal infection, causing its hosts to transform into zombie-like creatures and leading to societal collapse. The first season follows Joel (Pedro Pascal), who escorts Ellie (Bella Ramsey), a young girl immune to the disease, across the United States.
While obvious, and again, tonal differences notwithstanding, “The Last of Us” is notable as the harbinger of successful live-action adaptations of video games in long-form storytelling. Like “Fallout,” it manages to replicate the vibe of the games, but unlike “Fallout,” which is very much ensconced within the continuity of the games, “The Last of Us” is a true blue adaptation of the first game, intent on exploring the post-apocalyptic world tinged with grit and melancholia.
5. Twisted Metal
Based on the vehicular combat video game franchise of the same name, “Twisted Metal” was developed by the screenwriters of “Deadpool,” Rhett Reese, and Paul Wernick. After a massive cyberattack, the post-apocalyptic world boasts of cities that are like walled fortresses. Criminals have formed factions and gangs, driving around in customized vehicles in a world that seemed to have been permanently frozen in a post-Y2K timeline. Anthony Mackie plays the role of a milkman, a courier tasked with delivering a mysterious package.
The milkman delivers these packages while driving through this post-apocalyptic United States, battling and dodging souped-up cars intent on capturing the packages. “Mad Max” but wackier, if that could even be believed, “Twisted Metal” shares the wacky and irreverent tonality of “Fallout” while not as well developed in terms of world-building as the former. But it more than makes up for the violence and its over-reliance on wacky hijinks, ensuring a fun thrill ride.
4. Daybreak
Based on the comic book series of the same name by Bryan Ralph, Daybreak is a 2019 post-apocalyptic comedy dram developed by Brad Peyton and Aron Eli Coeite. The series follows Josh Wheeler, a 17-year-old high school kid searching for his missing girlfriend in a world destroyed after a nuclear war. He is joined by a group of misfits while having to battle Mad-Max-style gangs as well as zombie-like creatures.
Very much indebted and inspired by the mish-mash of inspirations that “Fallout” bases itself on and becomes the basis for “Daybreak,” which also works as a coming-of-age narrative, where the adults are the zombies while the teenagers are the survivors in this dark world, racing to fulfill their destinies and find their lost love. It is frothy, violent, and funny, and it is one of the very unceremoniously canceled shows by Netflix that deserved a continuation.
3. Jericho
“Jericho” is a 2006 American television series that follows the residents of the fictional town of Jericho, Kansas. After a massive nuclear attack on 23 major cities in the United States, the residents of Jericho tried to rebuild their lives until conflicts began to stem with the neighboring city of New Bern. Internal and external conflicts threaten to break these towns apart in an already fraught post-apocalyptic world.
If you want to explore the aftermath of the nuclear apocalypse in its immediacy, “Jericho” is the show for you. It deftly explores the confusion and dilemmas felt by the survivors upon realizing the new world they find themselves in and how methods of survival become more and more fraught. While the show had been canceled by CBS in its first season, fan campaigning persuaded a return of the show for a shortened run of seven episodes in the second season, after which it would be canceled again. Its storylines had been continued in comic book form.
2. Silo
Imagine a show taking place entirely within the vault in “Fallout.” That is the most simplified premise for one of Apple TV+’s critically acclaimed shows. “Silo,” based on the series of novels by Hugh Howey, depicts a dystopian future where humanity exists in a giant silo that extends hundreds of storeys underground. The people living in these silos are bound by strict rules and a code designed to protect them until the inhabitants learn that the world they had learned outside has been destroyed by environmental conditions, which might not be true. It does start to threaten and unravel the reason behind the existence of the silo and the truth of the world outside it.
Creator Graham Yost takes the core tenet of apocalyptic science fiction in how the core tenets of humanity, albeit heightened, remain more or less intact and, when pushed, threaten to go back to their baseline state. While the tonality of “Silo” is of a far more serious bent than “Fallout,” if the Vault storylines had been your favorites, “Silo” is the show to scratch your itch.
1. The 100
One of the closest analogs to “Fallout,” “The 100,” takes place in a post-apocalyptic future. Ninety-seven years after a nuclear apocalypse wiped out all life on Earth, humanity has now ensconced itself in an orbiting space station called the Ark, and they have been inhabiting that station for three generations. However, as the Ark’s life support stations begin to fail, one hundred juvenile detainees are dropped onto the planet to determine whether it is habitable for humanity’s return, or at least recover and save resources for the people staying back at the Ark. As the hundred navigate the planet, they would have to survive and navigate team dynamics as well as the unknown that the planet has reconstituted itself as a dangerous dystopia.
Lucy’s exploration of Earth’s surface could bear similarities to these detainees’ adventures on the planet and the exploration and conflicts resulting from factions hidden on Earth, as well as cannibals and later artificial intelligence. If you are a viewer who likes a show running for over five seasons, “The 100” might be an option for you. With seven seasons and a story that is complete, it would be a full-course meal to devour. You would only have to swallow some of the teen angst and relationship drama of the early seasons that is a staple for the network.
