Daniel A. Gross writes about the Apple TV+ series “Silo,” a popular post-apocalyptic drama starring Rebecca Ferguson and Tim Robbins.
In a recent episode of “Silo,” the sci-fi series from Apple TV+, a character who does not have long to live puts on a virtual-reality headset. She’s spent her entire life in a subterranean shelter, which descends more than a mile into the earth like an upside-down skyscraper. What she sees in the headset is totally alien: the cloud forests of Costa Rica, recorded in the bygone year of 2018. We never see the red-eyed tree frog and iridescent birds that appear on her screen; instead, we watch her reach out and close her fingers on empty space.A book called “Amazing Adventures in Georgia,” which might as well be set in Atlantis, includes photographs of long-lost animals, forests, and a beach at twilight. In “Silo,” ten thousand people live on a hundred and forty-four subterranean levels, which are connected by an enormous spiral staircase.The world of “Silo” is both, most of the time, though it occasionally defies physics (at one point, Juliette falls hundreds of feet and lives) and linguistics (Ferguson’s pesky Swedish accent is one of the few flaws in her performance). The books on which the show is based, published by the sci-fi writer Hugh Howey, starting in 2011, are also built on a dubious theory that history is not only cyclical but centrally planned, through written rules. As the second season wears on, this notion warps the plot in ways that strain credulity, and the series’ innumerable cliffhangers gum up the narrative with artificial tension.The man begs for, then demands, a spot in the shelter, but there’s space only for the doctor and his family. “I kept telling you . . . get ready,” he says. “To build a shelter was to admit to the kind of age we lived in, and none of you had the guts to face that!” Other neighbors arrive and bicker for a few minutes about who should be allowed in.
