An inevitable spoiler for the end of Season 1 – so if you haven’t seen that, then avert your eyes and go back and watch Silo’s first excellent ten episodes.

Having been sent out to ‘clean’ – the euphemism for exile from the silo, and a certain death sentence – Juliette discovers that the world outside is a toxic wasteland after all. Picking her way through a crater full of desiccated corpses she seeks refuge in the adjacent silo, seemingly long deserted…

The ongoing hook of Silo’s first season in 2023 was the mystery surrounding the truth about what lay outside. In the brilliantly realised, claustrophobic, sweaty interior, a community that had lost touch with its own history had started to ask whether the threat of poison above ground was simply a lie to keep them incarcerated and enslaved.

Having answered that question conclusively at the end of Season 1, the sci-fi savvy viewer might well wonder what is left to drive this second series. Judging by the gripping second season opener, quite a lot.

The new mystery is what led to the collapse of the adjacent silo, the deaths of its inhabitants and whether anyone or anything has survived. To some extent the answer to that is entirely predictable – just as most of the beats of Season 1 were pretty easy to second guess. What makes Silo a compelling watch is that despite some formulaic elements, the realisation and storytelling is so accomplished, and Rebecca Ferguson’s central performance as Juliette so committed, we are glued to the screen nonetheless.

Verdict: Only someone who has never before encountered a post-apocalyptic drama won’t have seen the end-of-episode hook coming from the end of the opening scene, but I’d be lying if I claimed not to be entirely gripped throughout. I’m already impatient for next Friday’s drop and I suspect I’m in for the duration. 8/10

Martin Jameson

www.ninjamarmoset.com