Apple TV likes to spend a lot of money on prestigious sci-fi projects like “Dark matter” and “Foundation,” but their best in this subgenre is by some measure Graham Yost’s captivating “Silo.” The first season of this adaptation of Hugh Howey’s books played like a timely riff on philosophical sci-fi noirs like “Blade Runner,” stories that take big ideas to say something new about relatable themes . It was layered in mystery, expressing its willingness to take risks in the very premiere when it cast high-profile actors David Oyelowo and Rashida Jones to reveal that the real star of this show would be the phenomenal Rebecca Fergusonplaying an engineer who discovers that everything he knows is a lie.

If you haven’t seen season one, go back and watch it first, because we have to get spoilery (and it’s one of the best shows of 2023). At the end of season one, Juliette Nichols (Ferguson) was practically pushed out of the Silo by the deeply corrupt Bernard Holland (Tim Robbins) and superficially corrupt Robert Sims (Common). After seeing footage of Allison leaving the Silo, Juliette became convinced that the Powers That Be were lying and that it wasn’t as dangerous for her to leave as the residents had been led to believe. When he actually walked up the hill outside the exit, he discovered that there was a lie embedded within a lie. The footage was a fake vision given to Allison before the faulty heat suit she was wearing led to her death. The world has indeed become a desolate hell, but Martha Walker (Harriet Walter) had prepared Juliette’s suit sufficiently so that she could still pass over the gray horizon.

what now How are you doing with Juliette from Siloz? The second season of “Silo” doesn’t bring Juliette back to the Silo to fight Bernard and Sims again, which might have been narratively tempting, but would have lessened the impact of the first year. Juliette doesn’t just return to the Silo. Without spoiling too much, it’s not long before Juliette is forced into another shelter, where she finds a single survivor, perfectly played by the great Steve Zahn. He tells her about how all the other residents were inspired by someone who left their Silo to try to do the same, resulting in piles of bone remains outside the door. Juliette realizes that this could be the fate of her Silo and her role in it, as false hope can lead to mass slaughter. She promises to return to stop the destruction of a people, trading a lie for a more deadly truth.

As the two-hander unfolds across the landscape, the second season also focuses a growing resistance in Silo as people become more and more convinced that Juliette lived and that her expulsion was not overboard. Much of the plot there centers around Knox (Shane McRae) and Shirley (Remmie Milner), emerging leaders of a movement that Bernard knows he must destroy.

It’s a season about narratives and who controls them. It is also about how rebellion grows through kernels of truth. In the last final season, Holland told his lackeys, “What you just saw, you won’t see.” Of course, he learns that it’s impossible, but the writing is even richer than that in that it digs into the idea that even what we see, leading us to what we think we know, can be wrong. It is not so much about what is true and false as how these beliefs can be used to control people and shape society. It’s an incredibly rich and intelligent show.

That said, it lacks a bit of the momentum of season one, as the writing often seems to revolve around these ideas without the same propulsive plot to drive them. Fortunately, whenever it feels like it’s starting to repeat itself, one of the performers will find a character beat to ground the philosophical meandering. Robbins and the rest of the Silo crew are solid, but the season belongs to Ferguson and Zahn, who find a perfect balance of fascination with seeing another real human being and the paranoia and fear that has worked its way into his every fiber. being. Isolation makes you lonely, but it also destroys your communication skills and trust in humanity. Zahn and the writers understand this.

Apple TV has become one of those services that’s crowded enough now that it can be difficult for even its best shows to cut through the noise. Whenever people tell me they’re considering a free trial—and I think everyone should, given the overall average of the company—I always encourage them to prioritize “Silo.” It’s not a show that can easily be cut into viral videos, and it’s not as flashy as some of their better-known offerings. Still, it’s what people always tell me they miss from Prestige TV’s heyday: character-driven writing that doesn’t treat its audience like idiots.

If the first season felt like an allegory for how we all wanted to escape the nightmare of the pandemic, the second one asks us an even scarier question that we will all have to answer with more urgency in the coming months: What now ?

Six episodes screened for review. Premiere on November 15^th.