GOING UNDER GROUND

THE WOOL TRILOGY COMES TO SCREENS IN SUBTERRANEAN SERIES SILO 

- BRYAN CAIRNS

IMAGINE EVERYTHING YOU HOLD true turned out to be one gigantic lie. That's the conundrum that threatens to devour the last 10,000 humans on Earth in upcoming TV series Silo.

Based on Hugh Howey's bestselling trilogy of Wool novels, the dystopian drama takes place after a global event wipes out most of the population. In the aftermath, a community of survivors settles into a massive bunker that stretches downwards beneath the planet's surface. The structure protects people from the toxic atmosphere... or so they believe

What hooked showrunner Graham Yost (Justified, Speed), however, wasn't the post-apocalyptic landscape, but the puzzles woven into the narrative, "What grabbed me about the story is, 'Oh wow. This is a mystery. Who built the silo? When? Why? What's going on?"" Yost tells SFX. "Then it's the whole question of, 'Is it deadly outside? What's going on? 

"And it wasn't people with stuff wrapped around them, going through deserted terrains and having to shoot wolves and fight each other for food," he continues. "For me, it was like, 'They dress like us. They talk like us. They complain about their boss like us. They complain about their husbands and wives like us. They do their jobs. They raise their kids, but they are living in a silo. They don't know when it was built or why?' I like that the dystopian element was not shoved in your face. We say it's like East Germany in 1983; it is a fairly soft dictatorship, at least it seems so. There is that sense that people are watching and something is going on." Silo follows Juliette, portrayed by Rebecca Ferguson, an engineer stationed in the lower levels of the silo. After the death of her lover George, which had been deemed an accident, Juliette begins to suspect foul play and will stop at nothing to expose the truth. But what she discovers may kill her.