Producing compelling TV shows is difficult, but one way to make the process easier is to cast Rebecca Ferguson—a fact borne out by Silo, a 10-part Apple TV+ series, whose derivative aspects are partially offset by its charismatic lead. The story of humanity’s last 10,000 survivors, who all live in a vast underground silo that protects them from the toxic world outside, it’s an adaptation of Hugh Howey’s novels that plays like a compendium of spare sci-fi parts. Fortunately, though, Ferguson is so magnetic that she helps the material feel, if not wholly fresh, then at least frequently intriguing.
Silo, which premieres May 5, is set in an undetermined future in which mankind, for its own safety, resides in a cavernous, multi-leveled underground structure. Its initial focus is on sheriff Holston (David Oyelowo), who maintains law and order by enforcing the rules set forth by this society’s governing Pact and the authoritarian judicial forces that outrank him.
No one knows how they got into the silo, what came before it, or what calamity befell the planet. Yet in order to preserve stability—and to avoid the sort of momentous rebellion that took place (and failed) 140 years prior—all investigations into the before-times is forbidden. That includes collecting ancient relics, which is expressly outlawed for reasons that are unknown to the silo’s residents—one of many ways in which the series asks us to accept that these folks have been conditioned into docility.
Of course, some are still curious, beginning with Holston’s wife Allison (Rashida Jones), who discovers a verboten hard drive and, with the aid of computer technician George (Ferdinand Kingsley), unlocks schematics of the silo which indicate that there’s a secret door located beneath its watery bottom. Moreover, it reveals that the enormous video screen that provides a view of the exterior wasteland—to which suicidal volunteers and/or the condemned are banished in order to “clean” the screen’s lens—is a lie; Allison finds a POV clip of this landscape as bright, sunshiny and alive.
Faced with this revelation, as well as distressing information about her failure to become pregnant (a procedure that’s sanctioned by the powers-that-be), a tormented Allison eventually makes a dire decision. This, in turn, instigates a highly personal inquiry by her husband, who soon must confront his own critical choice that will have far reaching consequences for himself, his office, and the silo at large.
It's at this point that Silo’s prologue ends and its real plot commences, courtesy of Holston’s surprising wish: his successor should be Juliette (Ferguson). A talented mechanic in charge of keeping the silo’s generator running, Juliette is unfit for the job. She accepts it, however, because it affords her the opportunity to look into the recent, suspicious “suicide” demise of George, with whom she was secretly in love.
Juliette’s decision to become the new sheriff rankles judicial bigwig Sims (Common), who wanted his own underling Billings (Chinaza Uche) in the post, and it likewise perturbs mayor Jahns (Geraldine James) and deputy Marnes (Will Patton). Even the head of IT, Bernard (Tim Robbins), is unsettled by this series of events, and that becomes more pronounced once bodies begin piling up and everyone is forced to accept new positions and paradigms.
There’s murder most foul in Silo, as well as giant honking indications that a conspiracy is afoot, and showrunner Graham Yost establishes his story’s underpinnings in capable, if routine, fashion. From the outset, there’s no doubt that Juliette is on the right track, and furthermore, that her sleuthing will shine a light on the sort of dystopian-fiction bombshells that are the genre’s stock and trade.
To do so, she must navigate a self-contained universe filled with foes (Common’s Sims), friends (Harriet Walter’s Martha) and estranged family members—in this case, Juliette’s fertility doctor dad Pete (Game of Thrones’ Iain Glen). The silo itself resembles the subterranean bunkers found in video games Fallout and Bioshock via Total Recall and Blade Runner, while the story’s primary conceit—the video-feed window that gazes upon a puzzling and scary foreign environment—recalls the similar one found in last year’s The Night Sky.
In various ways, Silo rehashes elements from previous post-apocalyptic affairs, and there are times when—per streaming-TV tradition—it suffers from narrative bloat; an early episode about an engine-room cataclysm, for example, could have been excised to no negative effect. Still, its setting is well-realized and its world-building is comprehensive and absorbing.
Whether it’s the apprenticeship-style practice of “shadowing” and the holidays celebrated by the silo’s denizens, or a debilitating illness that plagues certain residents and the upstairs-downstairs class dynamics that govern this strange habitat, the show’s milieu seems like a living, breathing entity rather than just a flimsy sci-fi construct. Not everything totally works; regardless of the context, the basic idea of these men and women agreeing to live in willful blindness is a bit preposterous. But by and large, Silo’s reality proves suitably believable.
Though it excessively spins its wheels on its way to a finale that’s destined to conclude with a (frustrating, if tantalizing) cliffhanger, and it clumsily hides the identity of its clandestine Big Bad, Silo remains a modestly worthwhile addition to Apple TV+’s roster of sci-fi sagas, thanks mainly to Ferguson. With a steely resolve that’s never affected or cartoonish, and is complemented by layers of hurt, bitterness and fury, Ferguson embodies Juliette as a determined gumshoe whose quest for the truth is carried out on behalf of both the public good and her own burning desire to understand why so many that she cares about (including her mother, who factors into flashbacks) have passed away under strange circumstances.
As in Mission: Impossible and Dune, Ferguson exhibits a feline ferocity that protects a wounded heart, and her forceful performance goes a long way toward making this saga’s tried-and-true twists and turns feel taut.
Whether Ferguson’s talents would be better served on a more novel endeavor is not an unreasonable question. As it stands, though, she’s the undeniable highlight of Yost’s mildly hackneyed—albeit captivatingly executed—mystery.
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