El Silo is a community living in an underground bunker after the Earth's surface was rendered uninhabitable. Nobody remembers the exact time that the remains of humanity have been there, nor who built that beastly basement, nor the reason that forced them to settle there: 140 years before, there was a rebellion and the losing faction erased all the hard drives, burned all the books and the outgoing regime of this war decided to treat any ancient artifact as a prohibited item that must be turned over to the authorities.
Due to its dimensions, 144 floors underground and with concrete everywhere, this silo conveys brutalist architecture. It has touches that range from the medieval, due to the celebrations with banners on the stairs, as if it were a 12th century castle, to the Soviet due to the administrative environments, both for aesthetic reasons and for the control that is insinuated over the population. No information can be published without the authorization of the people in charge of that community with 10,000 souls and the criteria for obtaining reproduction permissions are not even clear.
In this context, Sheriff Holston (David Oyelowo) and his wife Allison (Rashida Jones) receive authorization to remove the contraceptive device that she has implanted and have 365 days for her to become pregnant. It is her third attempt and, due to age, also the last. But, when Allison receives information that challenges the system (and that, therefore, could lead to a lethal banishment), her gaze changes around this stage that should be so hopeful and begins to question the official story of a system that to priori works and keeps them safe. What if the planet is actually habitable?
Graham Yost, who deserves the viewer's attention for having written the neowestern Justified, indulges in dystopian science fiction with different points in favor. He builds a mythology, based on Hugh Howey's novels, which configure a present that we cannot place in our time frame but that at first glance does not squeak. Especially disturbing is the intellectual blindness that prevails in a population from which history was taken away and, most worryingly, from which it is prevented from remembering, investigating or asking questions. It is the theme of the work: the need for human beings to question the system if they want to be free (and to what extent the loss of freedom can be comfortable for some, especially when an instinct of submission has been encouraged in citizens).
It takes advantage of its unique environment, which could possibly tighten the nuts in terms of the claustrophobia it could evoke but feels well built. Morten Tyldum, director of the first episodes, perhaps was commissioned not to exceed in his representation of Silo, solid in his artistic direction, to turn the production of Apple TV into the equivalent of a quality but accessible best-seller. His ability to go further in the visual is demonstrated at the end of the second episode, when the image transmits terror with the appearance of a specific piece of machinery, and in the third episode he directly manages to perfection a most conventional tension (when , to be exact, the engineering team must fix the generator).
And, in the narrative, Silo remains classic, understanding the episodic unit as a tool to generate expectation for the next installment, but skipping one of the fundamental rules of television fiction: the presentation of the main character in the pilot episode. Because, despite the synopsis, the fundamental figure of the work is Juliette Nichols, an engineer who works in the Silo generator, played by Rebecca Ferguson (Dune) who also acts as executive producer and who perfectly represents femininity. pragmatics. The portrayal of the characters and her conflicts is adult, as is Juliette's, which does not have an automatic presentation but must be seen episode by episode to understand the different aspects of her personality.
In summary, Silo consolidates its content platform, Apple TV, as one of the bastions for lovers of science fiction. After adapting Asimov's impossible Foundation, offering us the never-recommended alternative history of For All Mankind and the challenging alien offensive of Invasion, here is a television blockbuster with foundations as solid as all the concrete that appears on the screen.
How grateful it is when a production understands its commercial vocation from its perspective of the pre-streaming era, when it trusted the intelligence of the viewer, the narrative efficiency and the spectacle and entertainment were sought without infantilizing them.
