Moreover, it reveals that the enormous video screen that provides a view of the exterior wasteland-to which suicidal volunteers and/or the condemned are banished in order to “clean” the screen’s lens-is a lie Allison finds a POV clip of this landscape as bright, sunshiny and alive. Of course, some are still curious, beginning with Holston’s wife Allison (Rashida Jones), who discovers a verboten hard drive and, with the aid of computer technician George (Ferdinand Kingsley), unlocks schematics of the silo which indicate that there’s a secret door located beneath its watery bottom. That includes collecting ancient relics, which is expressly outlawed for reasons that are unknown to the silo’s residents-one of many ways in which the series asks us to accept that these folks have been conditioned into docility. Yet in order to preserve stability-and to avoid the sort of momentous rebellion that took place (and failed) 140 years prior-all investigations into the before-times is forbidden. No one knows how they got into the silo, what came before it, or what calamity befell the planet. Its initial focus is on sheriff Holston ( David Oyelowo), who maintains law and order by enforcing the rules set forth by this society’s governing Pact and the authoritarian judicial forces that outrank him. Silo, which premieres May 5, is set in an undetermined future in which mankind, for its own safety, resides in a cavernous, multi-leveled underground structure. Fortunately, though, Ferguson is so magnetic that she helps the material feel, if not wholly fresh, then at least frequently intriguing.

The story of humanity’s last 10,000 survivors, who all live in a vast underground silo that protects them from the toxic world outside, it’s an adaptation of Hugh Howey’s novels that plays like a compendium of spare sci-fi parts. Producing compelling TV shows is difficult, but one way to make the process easier is to cast Rebecca Ferguson-a fact borne out by Silo, a 10-part Apple TV+ series, whose derivative aspects are partially offset by its charismatic lead.

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