The UK decision to ban supporters of Israeli football club Maccabi Tel Aviv from a match against Aston Villa last year sparked such intense backlash that the West Midlands Police Chief Craig Guildford has stepped down. A gov’t report concluded inaccuracies and ‘bias’ factored into the police’s decision to ban fans, even though they had acted violently in Amsterdam.
This story contains spoilers for the fifth episode of “Fallout” Season 2.
On a sunny afternoon in late February 2025, members of the “Fallout” crew are setting up a suspended rig along a dusty road on their Santa Clarita set that will be used to film a scene where Walton Goggins’ character — a long-lived mutated survivor of the nuclear apocalypse known simply as the Ghoul — will get punched out a window.
A short walk away on an indoor stage, Ella Purnell and Kyle MacLachlan have been filming their characters’ long-anticipated reunion. The cameras are on Purnell’s Lucy MacLean, a sheltered former Vault dweller who’s traveled from the California coast to New Vegas in pursuit of her father.
“My little Sugarbomb,” says MacLachlan as Hank MacLean to a woozy Lucy just before she passes out. Among those observing the takes on the monitors are “Fallout” showrunners Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Graham Wagner.
Both moments take place within the final minutes of “The Wrangler,” the fifth episode of the Prime Video series’ second season, which sees Lucy and the Ghoul finally make their way through the streets of the post-apocalyptic remnants of Sin City after trekking through the Mojave Desert together.
An adaptation of the popular video game franchise, “Fallout” is set in an alternate future around 200 years after much of the world was decimated by nuclear bombs. Some Americans, including Lucy’s father Hank, survived by moving into a network of underground bunkers called Vaults, while others were left to fend for themselves in the Wasteland.
In a flashback, Cooper Howard (Walton Goggins) visits Las Vegas in “Fallout” Season 2.
(Lorenzo Sisti / Prime Video)
Unlike many of the locations featured in the series so far, New Vegas is one that fans of the franchise are very familiar with because it’s the setting of the 2010 game “Fallout: New Vegas.”
Although incorporating such an iconic setting came with its own challenges, the allure of taking the story to New Vegas was too irresistible for the show’s creative team.
“When Lucy left the Vault, she was very innocent, very naive,” says Robertson-Dworet. By the end of the first season, “she’s had a couple of weeks in the Wasteland and she’s certainly had her eyes opened a fair amount. But she is on a journey to follow her father and uncover even darker secrets. So the idea of taking her to the actual City of Sin was incredibly appealing at a metaphorical or character level.”
Audiences have seen how Lucy’s time on the surface world has been affecting her. And her first day in New Vegas has been a doozy: She encountered terrifying mutated reptilian creatures known as Deathclaws, has been dealing with a drug addiction, committed some theft and even killed a man.
“As we get closer to Vegas … you really start to get to see how much [the Ghoul has] rubbed off on her,” executive producer Jonathan Nolan says. “That fundamental question of ‘Is she willing to to break some of the same rules that he is?’ is one of the driving questions of the narrative. How far is too far and … how many of her carefully fostered beliefs … will survive the journey through the Wasteland?”
The Ghoul (Walton Goggins) sitting alone inside the Atomic Wrangler Hotel room in “Fallout.”
(Prime Video)
Bethesda Game Studios’ Todd Howard, who serves as an executive producer of the “Fallout” series, acknowledges that bringing New Vegas into the show for Season 2 added “an element of difficulty above and beyond that of Season 1.”
“It’s exciting because you’re going to an iconic ‘Fallout’ location, but it’s also tricky because players know it,” Howard explains. “It’s easier, creatively, to go someplace [players] don’t know, but to take the show to a place that they know and love so much, you really have to be extra careful.”
The dilemma for the show’s creative team involved the balance between video game accuracy and the realities of building practical sets. While using a digital background would enable the show to recreate the precise geography of the games, the team’s aim is to try to build and use as many real sets, props and effects as possible.
“Our feeling was always … that we can make it more cinematic, more tactile, if we actually build [New Vegas],” Robertson-Dworet says. “The trade off is going to be [that] maybe we are not going to get it right down to the pixel the way fans remember it. [But] the level of commitment to the games and [to] honoring the games as much as we possibly can is very real.”
Understandably, the “Fallout” crew was not able to build an entire city from the ground up. So instead of incorporating every building on the New Vegas map, they aimed to include some favorites along with ones that best served the story.
The “Fallout” cast and crew on the Freeside set in Santa Clarita.
(Lorenzo Sisti/Prime Video)
Freeside, which is the district that exists in the remnants of Las Vegas’ Fremont Street, was built on a lot in Santa Clarita previously used by shows like “Westworld” and “Deadwood,” while a defunct shopping mall was transformed into the New Vegas Strip.
“Because I’m dealing with real buildings that exist in the real world, it’s not laid out exactly the same as it is in the game,” says Howard Cummings, the show’s production designer. “I put some greatest hits of Freeside, essentially, in a three-block radius on one street. They are laid out progressively similar to the game, but not the [exact] relationship in the actual game.”
One of the focal points in Freeside is the Atomic Wrangler, a multi-story casino and bar with lodging that was featured in “Fallout: New Vegas.”
“The Atomic Wrangler was so specific in the game,” says Cummings. “It has specific architecture and has this terrific neon sign that I love with the cowboy … There’s no way to take [a building that] already existed [on set] and have it look like the Atomic Wrangler … so I put a facade in front of a facade.”
Some of that wizardry went into the interior of the Atomic Wrangler as well. The first floor bar area, for instance, is actually housed in a different building across the dirt street.
“It was the old saloon in ‘Westworld,’” says Cummings, who was also the production designer on Nolan’s sci-fi western that aired for four seasons on HBO. “Turning that into a ‘50s nightclub was really fun. What used to be the stage in the old saloon got shifted to the other side.”
Lucy (Ella Purnell) browses the merchandise in Sonny’s Sundries.
(Prime Video)
The “Fallout” series marks the first television project for Howard, who is known for his work on the “Fallout” and “Elder Scrolls” series of video games. Besides the scale of the production, what has surprised him the most has been just how much the show does utilize practical designs and effects.
“I thought more of it would be fake,” Howard says. But “they really wanted to make everything as practical as possible. … It’s not just the scale of it, but the level of detail and the small things — I was pretty blown away. I thought there’d be more ‘movie magic,’ fakery, but no.”
He recalls visiting the Vault set for the first time during the show’s first season and being amazed that not only had the crew built a full Vault people could walk through, but how even the smallest detail — like a multi-page report on an official’s desk — was fully fabricated.
This attention to detail is apparent within New Vegas as well, from the various goods sold at Sonny’s Sundries (at marked-up prices) to the working monitors of all sizes seen in a certain executive penthouse.
For Nolan, walking onto New Vegas for the first time came with a unique sense of familiarity thanks to having played the games.
“The Germans haven’t come up with a phrase for it yet, but there’s the form of deja vu that you get when you enter a physical version of a space that you’ve come to know virtually,” says Nolan, who explains he felt that sense for the first time when he visited Miami after coming to know the city in a “Grand Theft Auto” video game.
But what he especially delighted in was being able to feature a Deathclaw outside the Strip.
“Fallout” executive producers James Altman, left, and Jonathan Nolan and co-executive producer Noreen O’Toole at the video village.
(Lorenzo Sisti / Prime Video)
“The Deathclaw [is] such a hallmark of that of that game,” says Nolan. “Everyone begins ‘Fallout: New Vegas’ by looking at Vegas and going, ‘Oh, I’ll walk to Vegas.’ The reason you can’t just do that is the Deathclaw, you find that out very quickly, so bringing that to life and spending time on set with the amazing artists of Legacy [Effects] and [Industrial Light & Magic] … was just an extraordinary collaboration.”
While the first season of “Fallout” was filmed in New York (and other locations), the team moved the production to California for Season 2. The move involved disassembling the Vault sets and transporting them across the country in 77 semitrucks to be rebuilt again — this time all connected on one sound stage — in L.A.
Nolan says “Fallout’s” move back to California was “largely for creative reasons” and to reconnect with his former “Westworld” crew members, but he has also been outspoken about the importance of getting Hollywood productions back to California. He even invited state lawmakers on set while filming Season 2 to show them the importance of California’s film and TV tax credit program to reverse the exodus of Hollywood productions.
“We’re hopeful,” says Nolan. “We’re going to keep shooting ‘Fallout’ here. Season 3 [is] heading into production, hopefully, later this year and we’re going to do our part. But hopefully other people will be pushing hard to bring as much production back to California as possible.”
Coronation Street fans think they have worked out just who is calling newcomer Jodie Ramsey and it could have a link to Emmerdale after the two programmes joined forces for Emmerdale
Jodie Ramsey debuted on Coronation Street last week and was subjected to a series of intrusive phone calls(Image: )
Coronation Street fans think they have worked out just who is calling newcomer Jodie Ramsey on the ITV soap. Fans of the world’s longest running soap were treated to a historic crossover episode earlier this month when the programme joined forces with Emmerdale, and it seems clear that the link between the two shows is still there.
One of the biggest surprises in Corriedale was the revelation that Graham Foster was still alive, years after he was supposedly murdered on Emmerdale, and Jodie was seen tied up in the back of his van. She has since made it to Weatherfield, where she promptly revealed herself as the long-lost sister of Shona Platt (Julia Goulding), even thought the Roy’s Rolls waitress has failed to make any mention of her sibling throughout her decade on the Manchester backstreet.
In Monday’s edition of Coronation Street, Jodie was seen ignoring her phone as it rang over and over again and eventually had a panic attack. The worrying moment led to David, who is married to Shona, inviting her to stay with her at number eight but there was no mention of just who was harassing Jodie.
Taking to Reddit, one fan asked: “Right then, who do we think Jodie was avoiding calls from on Monday? I’m not as clued up with Emmerdale, but do we think there’s a link there? Bit sick of this long-lost thing to be honest, did she HAVE to be Shona’s sister?” In response, another viewer said: “Calling it now it’s graham foster! surely he wouldnt have just let her go after all that!”
A second fan said: “Agree about the long lost thing its been used to often in soaps and that was a ridiculous way for Jodie to be introduced Graham would be my guess but if she was captive in that van would she still have her phone anyway.” But others think it might have been sex trafficker Nathan Curtis, and Shona was instrumental in saving David’s niece Bethany (Lucy Fallon) from him when she first arrived, having crossed paths with him before.
One fan wrote: “I’m going to guess an abusive ex boyfriend that she has only just escaped,” and another replied: “It would be interesting if it were Nathan bc that’s partly what caused Shona to join, although I think he’s in prison!”
Fans were already suspicious of the situation when Jodie first arrived, with one writing: “Shona’s sister just came out of nowhere, why now? Must be more to the story!”
Another said: “Apparently Jodie is Shona’s sister, but I don’t understand why they’ve got her turning up now. And in such a weird way – bound up in the back of a van. And what’s the relevance of them both having the tree of life tattoo? It’s bound to be something weird.”
In recent years, the programme has favoured the use of characters being revealed as relatives, with Bernie Winter having been revealed as the long-lost mother of DC Kit Green, whilst the police officer himself turned out to be the real father of Brody Michaelis, after the tearaway teenager turned up on a neighbouring street with his family.
Prior to that, Britain’s Got Talent star and comedian Jack Carroll was cast as Bobby Crawford, a nephew that Carla Connor (Alison King) never knew she had. In 2018, former Brookside actress Claire Sweeney was cast as Cassie Plummer on the programme, and a major retcon took place where it was revealed that she was the biological mother of Tyrone Dobbs, not Jackie Dobbs, who was built into the history of the show when she played a major part in Deirdre Barlow’s legendary prison storyline some 20 years earlier.
Coronation Streetairs Monday to Friday at 8:30pm on ITV1 and is available to stream from 7am onITVX.
Saudi Arabia’s strike on Mukalla port has triggered tensions with its partner in the Arab coalition in Yemen and its Gulf Arab neighbour, the United Arab Emirates.
The coalition spokesman, Major-General Turki al-Maliki, said two ships entered the port of Mukalla, carrying more than 80 vehicles and containers of weapons and ammunition destined for the Southern Transitional Council (STC), without informing Saudi Arabia or the internationally recognised Yemeni government.
There are serious differences between the two allies in Yemen, and now it is at its peak and perhaps a turning point that would impact Yemen.
The Yemeni government has lost control of events following a military escalation between Saudi Arabia and the UAE in Hadramout governorate, where Mukalla lies, in December.
The Presidential Leadership Council (PLC) is divided into two factions, each loyal to one party in this conflict. The difference had been simmering for years away from the spotlight until it exploded publicly over the past few days.
Saudi Arabia and the UAE are key members of the Arab military coalition in Yemen, formed to confront the Houthis, who took full control of the capital, Sanaa, by force in 2015 and later imposed their own government.
This conflict of interest between Saudi Arabia and the UAE has been escalating gradually since the UAE-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC) formed in 2017 as a separatist political and military force seeking an independent state in the south – South Yemen – an independent state between 1967 and 1990.
Earlier in December, the STC forces crossed red lines by controlling all southern governorates, including Hadramout and al-Mahra governorates. That did not go down well in Saudi Arabia, which considered the move a threat to its national security.
Hadramout also represents economic depth for Yemen with its oil and gas resources and related infrastructure, and also has a vital border crossing with Saudi Arabia, making it part of the equation for border security and trade.
The latest public fallout between Saudi Arabia and the UAE will cast a dark shadow over the situation in Yemen politically, economically, and militarily. The Yemeni political circles were divided into two camps, with the government members each following one of the external parties to the conflict – Saudi and Emirati.
The clearest outcome of the differences would be seen in the eight-member PLC, an internationally recognised body, which is already divided into camps loyal to Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
One camp is headed by Rashad al-Alimi, the PLC president, and includes Sultan al-Arada, Abdullah al-Alimi Bawazir, and Othman Hussein Mujalli. The second is led by the head of the STC force, Aidarus al-Zoubaidi, and includes Abdul Rahman al-Mahrami (also known as Abu Zaraa), Tariq Mohammed Saleh, and Faraj Salmin al-Bahsani.
The leaders of both camps issued two different statements regarding the calls made by al-Alimi for the UAE to withdraw from Yemen following the Saudi strike on the ships carrying weapons to the STC. One was in favour of the UAE’s exit from Yemen, and the other was against — showing they are representing the interests of regional players and at the same time confirming that Yemen is a venue for a proxy war.
Within the Yemeni political landscape, the quick developments and successive events are pushing Yemen into a new phase of an internal war among political and military components that make up the legitimate government, with new internal fighting among many armed factions.
It is also taking the focus away from the Houthi rebellion in the north, which controlled Sanaa and the most populous provinces in Yemen.
The main goal for the legitimate Yemeni government and the Saudi-led Arab coalition was to confront the Houthis’ takeover. Now, the country is on the brink of collapse and a new phase of turmoil after more than a decade of armed conflict, which could help the Houthis to expand their influence beyond their current areas of control.
The latest event will weaken the Saudi-led coalition further and cast doubt over its cohesion and ability to achieve its declared joint goals for Yemen.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
