If you’ve smashed your way through all 8 episodes of Amazon’s Fallout TV series already (and who could blame you? It’s great fun!) then we’d recommend Silo on Apple TV Plus as a worthy replacement for your missing fix (or Stimpak) of subterraneous, post-apocalyptic dystopian sci-fi.
Going underground
The original series of Silo, released in 2023, has an 88% Tomatometer rating on Rotten Tomatoes and became not only Apple’s number one drama series but the number 1 streaming show on all networks for a while.
In Silo the last 10,000 people on earth are living in a vast mile-deep silo underground, afraid to visit the toxic surface. Nobody remembers why the silo was built and things don’t work out well for anybody who asks too many questions. Just like in Fallout, items from the before times are described as “relics” and are highly sought after, especially by the local police force who confiscate any they find, in exactly the same way as Fallout’s Brotherhood are obsessed with finding relics from the time before the bombs landed. But the similarities don’t stop there; in both dramas, technology has a retro 1950s feel and it becomes increasingly clear that the people in charge aren’t being entirely open and honest with their citizens about what is really going on.
Silo is creator Graham Yost’s adaptation of Hugh Howey's trilogy of books bearing the same name. While the Fallout TV show is very keen to explore the world outside of its vaults and veer into quirky humor, Silo has so far kept to the claustrophobic confines of life underground, creating a sinister Orwellian atmosphere of repression and class warfare in a world where it feels violence could very easily bubble to the surface at any moment.
We already knew Silo was coming back for a season 2, but fans of the original series have had to wait for longer than expected, because the dystopian drama was affected by the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes of 2023, leaving the show on something of a cliffhanger. Nothing is confirmed, but we’d estimate a release date in early 2025 for season 2.
Way down now
In an interview with Collider, star of the show Rebecca Ferguson has just let slip that seasons 3 and 4 of Silo are likely to be green-lighted by Apple. Chatting to journalist Steve Weintraub, Ferguson said that there are definite plans to finish filming the trilogy of books by Hugh Howey on which the series is based and that it would require 2 more seasons, shot at the same time, to get to the end:
"So I believe, unless any Apple person is gonna jump on, I think we're absolutely fine with saying Season 1, we've done. Season 2 is shot and coming out, and we're now looking at green-lighting Seasons 3 and 4. And I think we would film them maybe together, and that would be the end", said Ferguson.
So, while you’re waiting for the next series of Fallout to arrive, it’s likely that you’ll be able to watch two whole seasons of one of the finest sci-fi shows Apple TV Plus has to offer.
