Creator Graham Yost (Band of Brothers, Justified) runs this show based on novelist Hugh Howey’s Wool series about a dystopian future where 10,000 people exist in an underground bunker called the Silo. They’ve been told the outside world is poisonous and uninhabitable, but is it? They live under an oppressive and opaque regime with draconian rules, and for some residents, something doesn’t seem right.
As it gets rolling, the series focuses on Juliette Nichols (Rebecca Ferguson), a highly capable engineer who manages to keep the Silo’s aging turbine spinning, producing power and breathable air. The Silo has one peculiar and unbending rule: If a resident says out loud they want to go outside, they’re forced out in a spacesuit, asked to clean the camera that feeds images of the barren outside world to a monitor inside, and then as they walk away, they apparently die after a few steps.
Juliette is determined to unravel the mystery. Who built the Silo and why? What’s really going on outside? Like the 2013 film and 2020-23 TV series Snowpiercer, Silo has a claustrophobic setting, class struggles, and a group of underdogs trying to make things right. We’re halfway through season 1, and season 2 is in development. It’s a gripping and entertaining series. (10 45- to 62-min. episodes)
—Glen Starkey
