Silo Season Two Review – This dystopian thriller is bigger and better than before | Television and radio

Lok, things are pretty dire. As the nights draw in, there are few reasons to feel particularly optimistic that 2025 will be filled with glorious testimonies of humanity’s innate goodness. But the return of Silo reminds us that things could be much worse.

Season 1 of the sci-fi – based on Hugh Howey’s dystopian novels – introduced us to the last 10,000 people on Earth, living in an underground silo centuries after an apocalyptic event had left the surface uninhabitable. Anyone who left the silo – or was banished – died within minutes, with their deaths broadcast to the entire population.

But residents had begun to question whether or not the footage they were shown was fake—and if so, what other secrets the authorities might be keeping from them. The answer came at the end of the series when Juliette (Rebecca Ferguson), an engineer turned sheriff, was banished. We saw that yes, the world was indeed the poisoned hell they had been told, but they were not alone – there were many other silos. Thanks to some ingenious use of tape, which made her suit airtight, Juliette managed to survive.

Season two picks up where the first left off, with Juliette using Ferguson’s trademark badassery to get to the safety of a nearby silo whose sole inhabitant is the aptly named Solo (Steve Zahn). There, she learns that her original silo is one of many similar structures that often fall into rebellion and the annihilation of its inhabitants. True to form, things go home, where the mercurial mayor, Bernard (Tim Robbins), is aided by the ambitious Judge Meadows (Tanya Moodie) and the gravel-voiced head of security, Robert (Common), in the struggle to suppress a rebellion. The masses make Juliette a folk hero and use her as proof that venturing outside to repopulate Earth may be possible.

The first season was clever, inventive and often exciting – and the second is even better. It remains slow-paced and visually dull – so much so that it requires a bright TV in a pitch-black room – but the aesthetic works to its advantage, never letting us forget that these characters are trapped in a claustrophobic, subterranean nightmare where the idea of ​​taking a single breath of fresh air or feeling sunshine on your skin is worth risking your life for.

Now, after seeing Juliette go unscathed, they have harbored greater ambitions than mere survival. And Juliette must prevent them from suffering the same fate as their neighbors, whose corpses litter the landscape.

While the fabulous Ferguson remains adept at swinging through the air on makeshift ropes, this season gives the rest of the cast more to do. Her former friends in “Mechanical”, the lowest level of the silo, are given more leeway, with Knox (Shane McRae) and Shirley (Remmie Milner) stirring up discord. Perhaps most welcome of all is the extra screen time given to chief engineer Martha (Harriet Walter) and the security chief’s wife, Camille (Alexandria Riley), who proves to be an unlikely puppet master.

Silo has been making bold narrative moves since off. Its first episode followed two characters who never reappeared, introducing Ferguson as the main character only in the final moments. Season two has fun with an almost silent opening episode where Juliette struggles to survive in Solo’s ersatz version of the home she was just banished from. But what makes this season bigger and better is that each character’s fight for truth and survival feels more urgent. This world is a tinderbox where the last remnants of humanity could be horribly wiped out by a single bad idea that spreads like wildfire. As the new sheriff puts it when confronted with shifting allegiances, “I didn’t cross the line—the line moved.”

A program where the choices of individuals can lead to the downfall of the collective may not be the most comforting watch. But Silo’s meta-commentary on how bad ideas can rip through a population like a deadly virus adds a fascinating layer to an already inventive sci-fi. And at least, in our increasingly dystopian world, we can still go outside, take a deep breath—and then return home to watch some riveting television.