The apocalypse is all the rage in the streaming world right now. Netflix, for one, keeps cranking out new shows about how humanity reacts to existential catastrophe (3 Body Problem, Goodbye Earth), while Prime Video’s biggest new show in recent memory is the video game adaptation Fallout — a story about survivors at a time when the planet has been irradiated by nuclear war.
The show was such an immediate hit for Amazon’s streamer (and it remains the #1 streaming TV show in the world this week, according to Reelgood) that Prime Video renewed it for a second season pretty much straight away. I also can’t get over the fact that Jonathan Nolan directed the first three episodes of this wild and wacky imagining of what it would be like once we all emerge from fallout shelters and encounter bizarre, mutated characters and creatures living in a violent wasteland aboveground.
This show, in other words, makes the nuclear apocalypse way more fun to watch than it ought to be. Compare that to Nolan’s brother Christopher, who preferred to make a much more cerebral movie (Oppenheimer) about the scientist behind the bomb that makes said apocalypse possible. Me, I prefer Prime Video’s joyride through the devastation, and based on the data it seems that I’m far from alone.
Fallout is once again #1 this week in the US according to the latest data from the streaming search engine Reelgood, which tracks the most popular TV shows across all of the major streamers — from Netflix to Max, Apple TV+, Hulu, Paramount+, Peacock and more. Reelgood Streaming Charts monitor 20 million viewing decisions each month across every streaming platform in the US.
For the 7-day period that ended on April 24, the 10 shows that topped Reelgood’s latest TV chart are as follows:
- Fallout (Prime Video)
- Baby Reindeer (Netflix)
- Shogun (Hulu)
- Under the Bridge (Hulu)
- Ripley (Netflix)
- Sugar (Apple TV+)
- The Sympathizer (Max)
- Conan O’Brien Must Go (Max)
- Palm Royale (Apple TV+)
- 3 Body Problem (Netflix)
As for why Fallout is so good (it’s got a resoundingly good 93% critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes), it certainly helps when you’re adapting one of the greatest video game franchises of all time. But credit must also be given to the fantastic cast, starting with Ella Purnell (Yellowjackets) as the optimistic Vault-dweller Lucy. With her all-American can-do spirit, she’s described by Prime Video as having a “peaceful and idealistic nature” which gets tested when she’s forced to the surface to rescue her father.
Aaron Moten, meanwhile, plays the young soldier Maximus. He rises to the rank of squire in the Brotherhood of Steel with a zeal that sees him do pretty much anything to advance the Brotherhood’s goals of law and order. Walton Goggins, meanwhile, plays a disfigured and morally ambiguous bounty hunter known as the Ghoul. All these disparate pieces collide once an artifact emerges from a researcher who has the power to completely change the power dynamics in the show.