Silo, Apple TV+’s 10-part adaptation of the first book in Hugh Howey’s bestselling trilogy of the same name, is not for the claustrophobic. The world-building is meticulous, and that world is almost entirely underground. The last few thousand people left alive on Earth at some unspecified (but we suspect not too distant) time in the future have been confined in a multilevel, self-sustaining, subterranean silo while they wait for the planet to recover from whatever toxic event rendered it uninhabitable. No one knows when this will be, just as they don’t know who built the silo, since a rebellion in the past erased their history. The set designers and CGI wizards have had a field day crafting an environment whose futuristic bones are now only just visible beneath shrouds of grime and the kind of Heath Robinsonesque clutter that is bound to accumulate in a sealed human vault over time. It’s Soviet architecture meets steampunk medieval and the rendering of the silo’s different sections, from hydroponic farms to medical centres, make the place almost a character in its own right.
The story is equally thrilling and, as the plot thickens with almost every scene and does not stop even at the very last moment (a second series has already been commissioned, as well it should), equally oppressive.
