Just saw the first two episodes of Silo on Apple TV+, show-run by Graham Yost, whose previous impressive credits include The Americans, Sneaky Pete, and Justified, based on the Wool series of novels by Hugh Howey that I haven't read. These first two episodes bear some resemblance to most post-apocalypse stories, and even more to Apple TV+''s much lauded Severance. But Silo has a story and an ambience all its own, and it looks to be on its way to a top-notch science fiction series.
[Spoilers follow ...]
The narrative so far takes place in, well, a silo. You can leave, if if you want, but that's apparently a ticket to death, because there's poison in the air outside. I say "apparently" because, in the first episode, there's some talk that the deaths of people who leave, which inhabitants see in the silo on a big screen, is what we would today in our off-screen world call deep fakes. But in the second episode, it seems that Holston and his wife, who left the silo two years earlier, really did die. If I had to bet ... I don't know, but I'd come down on they're both being alive.
At this point, I don't see too many villains at hand -- maybe the Judiciary, which wields ultimate police power -- but just about all the action involves a bunch of varied people who for a variety of reasons think and maybe are sure that there's something more outside. These include Sheriff Holston and his wife Allison, who now are either dead or alive outside; George who has discovered something crucial about the silo but is now definitely dead inside it; and Juliet, an engineer, George's lover, sure that he was murdered, and now she's determined to find out what's really going on in and outside the silo. As I said, a unique narrative in a genre -- post-apocalypse -- where it's not easy to be unique. And characters are very well played by David Oyelowo as Sheriff Holston, Rasheeda Jones as his wife, Rebecca Ferguson as the engineer, and Will Patton as Holston's deputy.
Eight more episodes to go on a weekly basis, and count me in as an eager viewer.
See also Silo 1.3: Like Chernobyl, Repaired ... 1.4: Truth, Not Quite ... 1.5: Revelations ... 1.6-1.7: The Book and the Water ... 1.8: What Really Happened ... 1.9: I knew It! But What Then? ... 1.10: Three Truths
Well, although everything up to the ending in this, the very last episode of Falling Skies, was more of the recent same - which is to say, not very interesting or original - the series managed to pull off a memorable conclusion in its last few minutes.
