Ben’s adaptation of the year 2024: Fallout – Fallout (Amazon)

I was actually really torn on what to choose for this. On the one hand, I really enjoyed Knuckles and the road trip comedy it offered for Sonic the Hedgehog fans of all ages. At the same time, Arcane remains the gold standard for what an adaptation of a video game can be. Riot Games’ animated series is beautiful, emotional, authentic and effortlessly entertaining. So if that’s the case, why did I choose Fallout over Arcane and Knuckles ? It’s actually a pretty simple reason, and one I tend to stick to when it comes to discussing the best of the best for a calendar year, and that’s because Fallout is new. Knuckles is a spin-off series of an established and successful theatrical product, and Arcane is a follow-up season to an already universally beloved and absurdly acclaimed television series. Fallout is neither of those things.

I was actually quite skeptical when I heard Bethesda and Prime Video were teaming up for a Fallout series, partly because I’m still hesitant when a game is set up to be adapted, let alone one that has excelled in the past for its diverse and amazing world and intricate gameplay elements. People love playing Fallout games, but are their stories ever really that timeless and memorable? Personally, I don’t think they are, which is why I thought the odds were stacked against this series from the beginning.

And yet here we are, about eight months later and still pondering the depiction of the radioactive wasteland that was served up, an adaptation that to this day makes us all want a new Fallout game, despite the fact that we know that this probably won’t be on Bethesda’s docket for another five, six, seven years. This show is fun, hilarious, ripe with references, memorable and of high quality. Granted, this is due in part to some great casting choices, with Walton Goggins absolutely killing it as the Ghoul and inspiration for the Vault Boy, while Ella Purnell actually makes living in a vault seem compelling. Sure, the whole arc around the Brotherhood of Steel could have used some extra work, but it was never a hugely distracting thread that made the show stumble, it just wasn’t as refined as the broader whole.

Fallout deserves this spot as the best adaptation of the year in my eyes because it’s honestly the best Fallout has offered since 2015 when Fallout 4 arrived. We are starved of this franchise and Bethesda has no intention of satisfying that hunger anytime soon. So now the big question and challenge will be whether Fallout can continue and build on this success. Will season 2 live up to the hype, or will it struggle and flounder? Whatever becomes the case, Fallout was a triumph for 2024 and for the sake of this article, that’s all that matters.