Jonathan Nolan

The grotesque wasteland in Fallout (2024) could easily be enough to drive us away; Ella Purnell and Walton Goggins make us want to stay. We laughed more than we expected, because the series gives its grotesque humour people worth caring about. Jonathan Nolan directed the first three episodes, helping establish that balance between the setting and the performances. It is funny, carefully made television, and a persuasive case for a director whose elaborate worlds work best when the cast keeps us interested.

His liking for complicated stories was established in writing. The short story Memento Mori became the basis for Memento (2000); he later co-wrote The Prestige (2006), The Dark Knight (2008) and Interstellar (2014) with Christopher Nolan. Memory, time, identity and technology recur across his work, often in stories told out of order. That background is useful when considering his directing, though those screenplay credits should not be mistaken for authorship of the images.

Television let him build series of his own. Nolan created Person of Interest (2011–2016), directing one episode, then co-created Westworld (2016–2022) with Lisa Joy and directed three. Westworld's interest in artificial intelligence and consciousness continues his interest in the moral questions raised by science fiction. For the director of Fallout, the question is more immediate: can a densely imagined setting remain entertaining without the story losing its way?

The series largely manages it. Nolan's emphasis on a detailed, lived-in world gives the adaptation something substantial to explore, and his attention to tonal balance is as important as the setting itself. Our reservation is the wandering plot, which sometimes asks the cast to keep earning back our attention. That is a limit to our enthusiasm, not a reason to dismiss the care or the humour. Start there for Purnell and Goggins, and be prepared to forgive a few detours.