Personally, when I hear about a show called Silo, I get really jazzed. I’m mostly a city kid, and silos? They might as well be Stonehenge. Entire buildings just for grain or rockets depending on the local economy? Wild things. Get this though: In Apple TV Plus’ Silopeople live in one. Why? Well, that’s kind of the mystery. The problem is, Silo is going to solve it one way, before changing his mind and doing it another way.
This means there are two versions of it Silo. The first is the one you can watch right now, with the two episodes currently streaming on Apple TV Plus. In it you will learn about the community of people who live in a huge underground silo that reaches 144 levels deep into the earth. The outside world, they are told, is toxic and in order to survive in the silo they abide by all sorts of Byzantine rules.
First, no one talks about what happened before the silo. Even pre-Apocalypse objects are banned (you may find it hard not to laugh when characters mistake a Pez dispenser as if it were the Necronomicon); one of the heaviest crimes anyone can commit is simply proverb that they want to go out. If you do, they will give you the worst punishment they can think of, which is to send you out. It’s a death sentence with a chore attached: cleaning the camera that serves as the community’s window to the wasteland, then dying from the poison in the atmosphere.
Image: Apple TV Plus
Or that’s what everyone has been told. SiloThe first few episodes follow Allison (Rashida Jones), a woman who runs the silo’s IT, and her husband Holston (David Oyelowo), a sheriff, as they independently come to believe that the outside world may not be the wasteland that they are. I’ve been told it is. Finally, they decide to leave.
This creates the expectation that Silo may be interested in what is actually there, when in reality it is not. Some viewers may find this frustrating, like me. Beyond the hub of the show back to the silo after spending so much time following characters wondering what’s next outsidethe first two episodes feel unnecessarily complex, flitting back and forth between timelines when a linear narrative would be just as compelling.
But after looking into the future through Apple’s screeners, I can tell you that the show is going to be something else: a procedural in which Juliette (Rebecca Ferguson), a mechanic-turned-sheriff, has to solve a shocking murder.
That is a show I can get behind. Proceeding in an unusual setting is catnip to me – the familiar rhythms of detective work applied to genre fare is a great way to slowly introduce a new setting without heaps of exposition, introducing new fantastical elements as a case progresses. However, Silo Also loves heaps of exhibits; the first two-and-a-half episodes are basically world-building exercises.
Image: Apple TV Plus
Maybe that mode appeals to you. Silo has plenty to draw from as it is based on a series of books by Hugh Howey. They’re lovingly adapted into the show’s rich set design and a cast made up of remarkably talented actors who play everything deadly serious. Viewers who enjoy tons of mythology on their television will have a lot to chew on Silo‘s premiere, as each scene is shot through with an undercurrent of something terrible that happened before the show started – just like early Game of Thronesbut with much less going on.
But I can’t help thinking about how much more instantly interesting Silo would be if it started with Episode 3, where we’re introduced to a mechanic who reluctantly takes the sheriff’s job because she’s been forced to believe there’s a secret worth discovering, and takes us along.