Amazon's TV show based on a video game is incredibly fun

There's also Maximus (Aaron Moten), a low-level guy in the pseudo-religious military of the Brotherhood of Steel, who wants to be a “knight” and drive a mechanized power suit (think a more muscular Iron Man). And most enigmatic of all is the Ghoul (the always delightful Walton Goggins), a mutated, deformed creature who was recently buried alive. The three eventually bond when Maximus and the ghoul pursue a mysterious doctor (Michael Emerson) who Lucy meets by chance. The ghoul wants a bounty, Maximus wants to impress his superiors, and Lucy could get her father back with the doctor's help. Assuming they aren't killed by irradiated bears along the way.

Unfortunately, Maximus' character arc and storyline is by far the weakest aspect of the series. Neither the scripts nor motifs give the character depth or understandable motivation. Even the deliberately ill-defined ghoul seems more confident. And worse, especially in the complex, colloquial “Brotherhood of Steel,” the sci-fi gibberish sounds like white noise, even if you love hard sci-fi.

Still, two out of three strong leads aren't bad, and Purnell – with her anime eyes – and Goggins with his mischievous grin are more than enough to carry “Fallout” through the wasteland. Series creators Geneva Robertson-Dworet (“Captain Marvel”) and Graham Wagner (“Silicon Valley”) are true to the spirit of the game, but wisely avoid common video game adaptation clichés, such as an over-reliance on the “first” Person” perspective and one “too much”. – literal recreation of the original story. Opting for a new narrative simply set in the “Fallout” world, the series is a mix of adventure and puzzle mystery with more than enough action scenes to satisfy RPG fans. It's fun and only occasionally overly complicated.

And if the violence is fairly frequent and extremely graphic? Hey, in a fictional world where Goggins doesn't have a nose, everything fits together.