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I AM experiencing apocalypse fatigue. I don鈥檛 mean the numb hopelessness many people feel in response to the climate crisis, but a weariness with the explosion of fictional cataclysms on TV.
For every gem like The Last of Us or Station Eleven there is an utterly forgettable show with little to add to a crowded canon. With the bar raised so high, it has never been harder for writers to make their own takes stand out.
The latest post-apocalyptic show battling for the spotlight is Silo, based on Hugh Howey鈥檚 series of books of the same name. With the planet irrevocably poisoned and the air itself toxic, humans have retreated deep underground. Just one sensor provides a view of the blighted ruins outside. All knowledge of what caused this degradation and how long the silo has existed was lost in a rebellion 140 years before the show begins.
The silo is stratified across its 144 levels, with elites living in relative luxury 鈥渦p top鈥� and the most desperate languishing in 鈥渢he down deep鈥�. Inhabitants are assigned jobs that are essential to maintaining their home, from farming to IT, while order is upheld by a sheriff, an elected mayor and a murky judicial department dedicated to the 鈥減act鈥�, the rules set down by the silo鈥檚 founders.
Life there veers towards the totalitarian. To control the population, sexual relationships must be sanctioned and women are implanted with mandatory birth control, while the right to attempt to become pregnant is governed by a lottery. Artefacts that predate the rebellion or are from the 鈥渂efore times鈥� are illegal and may get you banished outside the silo, where you are politely asked to clean the sensor before you succumb to the noxious air. If you want to go outside, you can, but you can鈥檛 change your mind.
Silo鈥榮 concept sets it apart from a sea of lesser shows: the culture of this underground society, from such minutiae as its hand-painted mugs to community events like the foot race up the silo鈥檚 central staircase, can be fascinating.
So, too, are the ways that the silo鈥檚 inhabitants piece together knowledge from the before times, as protagonist Juliette (Rebecca Ferguson) reverse engineers the tools she needs to fix a watch, while IT engineer Lukas (Avi Nash) rediscovers patterns of star constellations through the sensor鈥檚 restricted view.
Equally interesting is the nature of the doom that drove humanity underground. We have seen so many zombie or viral apocalypses on TV that it is refreshing to see pollution as the threat du jour.
But there are too many ways in which Silo doesn鈥檛 make the grade. The first episode, Freedom Day, is poorly written and focuses too heavily on Holston (David Oyelowo), the silo鈥檚 unlikeable sheriff who refuses to act on the evidence of wrongdoing his wife Allison (Rashida Jones) uncovers.
Juliette is only introduced after an hour of heavy handed exposition, in which Silo barks questions at its audience rather than priming them to ask. Who built the silo? What happened in the rebellion? Is the world really polluted? The mysteries draw you in over the 10-episode season, but when answers are provided, some hinge on implausibilities and sweeping generalities that collapse under scrutiny.
Silo may well be a victim of its time, arriving amid some stellar post-apocalyptic shows. Despite its compelling premise, it needed to be better to make a dent in this oversaturated market.
Bethan Ackerley is a subeditor at New Scientist. Follow her on聽Twitter @inkerley
Bethan also recommends鈥�
HBO (US); StarzPlay (UK)
Based on the novel by Emily聽St. John Mandel, Station Eleven is a story about the power of art in聽a聽world ravaged by a聽deadly flu outbreak.
HBO (US); Sky and Now (UK)
This much-celebrated adaptation of the bestselling video game follows a smuggler and a teenage girl crossing the US 20 years after a fungal infection destroyed most of聽civilisation.
