Skip to main content

2023’s best sci-fi show is on Apple TV+. Here’s why you should watch it right now

A man and a woman talk in Silo.
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Although it doesn’t yet have the same prestigious reputation as something like HBO, Apple TV+ has proven that it can churn out genuinely great shows when it wants to. Shows like For All Mankind and Pachinko may never have been given the green light or the budget that they received if they were being pushed by another network, and Apple TV+ transformed them both into major success stories.

The streamer’s latest new show is Silo, a sci-fi series focused on a group of people who live in an underground silo in the aftermath of a nuclear disaster.  Silo isn’t just one of the best sci-fi shows on TV, it’s also one of the best shows on Apple TV+ ever. Here are a few reasons why you should watch it right now.

Recommended Videos

It features a wonderful ensemble

Rebecca Ferguson stands on a catwalk in Silo.
Apple TV+

Led by the unbeatably great Rebecca Ferguson, who has been in everything from the Mission: Impossible movies to The Greatest Showman to Dune, Silo features the kind of TV cast that would have been impossible to assemble 20 years ago. In addition to Ferguson, who is perhaps the most underrated actor working today, the cast also includes David Oyelowo, Rashida Jones, Tim Robbins, and Harriet Walter, who is coming off of her role as Caroline in Succession.

Each of these actors gets plenty to do on the show as well, so it never feels like any of the great talent that has been assembled for the show is wasted in service of the plot.

Its dystopian premise feels fresh

Rashida Jones and David Oyelowo look at a computer monitor together in Silo.
Apple TV+

After a wave of dystopian stories in the first half of the 2010s, most of the premises in this genre feel a bit tired. Silo manages to tweak the formula enough to make it work, though, as the show follows a group of survivors buried in a massive silo following an environmental disaster on the surface.

The show makes that premise feel grounded and real but also allows for doubt to seep in as the characters begin to question whether the premise is as real as they think it is.

It has plenty of intriguing mystery box elements

Apple TV+

As alluded to above, part of the fun of Silo is that while the show starts and we think we know what’s going on, as the episodes pass, our central characters begin to seem less and less sure. As a result, the inventive and brutal Silo has certain qualities in common with a show like Lost, where the setting itself is fantastical, and there’s also plenty of mysteries to be uncovered.

Alliances shift, and you’re never entirely sure who to trust and who not to. Because the show is still in the middle of its first season, it’s unclear whether it’ll ultimately stick the landing. For now, though, it’s pretty thrilling to watch.

It has high Apple TV production values

Apple TV+

One of the reasons the show remains so compelling is that, in addition to its smart writing and a great cast, it also has the kind of production values that only a company like Apple can give to its series.

It’s clear that Apple spared no expense in both casting the show and creating real sets for the actors to perform and interact with. When the CGI elements come into play, they’re immersive enough that you’re never jarred away from the story being told.

It has behind-the-scenes credibility

Common stands with two other judicial enforcers in Silo.
Apple TV+

The other reason to watch Silo, even though it’s still early in the show’s run, is that we know it’s in good hands. Graham Yost, the executive producer responsible for the critically acclaimed series Justified, is part of the creative team here, as are writers who have been staffed on a number of other critically acclaimed series.

All of that writing talent suggests that Silo has a real shot of continuing to be good for the foreseeable future, which means it may be worth the investment required to get in early.

Silo season one is currently streaming on Apple TV+.

Joe Allen

Joe Allen is a freelance writer at Digital Trends, where he covers Movies and TV. He frequently writes streaming recommendations and other best-of lists, as well as deep dives into some of his favorite movies. Joe has been in journalism for seven years, and has also written for The Washington Post, Inverse, and Distractify. He has an undergraduate degree from the University of Rochester and a masters from Syracuse University. He is based in upstate New York, where he spends much of his free time playing in a band.

Purdue vs. Michigan State: How to watch, results, and highlights
Michigan State basketball court from an aerial view.

Two of the Big Ten's best teams face off on Tuesday night. Braden Smith and the No. 13 Purdue Boilermakers (19-7) take on Jaden Akins and the No. 14 Michigan State on Tuesday night. After hot starts, both teams have dropped recent games. Purdue enters Tuesday's game on a two-game losing streak, with their most recent defeat coming at the hands of Wisconsin. Michigan State has lost three of their last five but picked up a crucial victory over Illinois this past Saturday.
After the departure of Zach Edey, Purdue had major questions in their frontcourt. Trey Kaufman-Renn has been better than advertised, as the junior forward leads the Boilermakers in points (19.4) and rebounds (6.3). Plus, Smith's veteran presence in the backcourt will pay dividends in March. It's a true team effort for Tom Izzo's Spartans, with five scorers between eight and 14 points per game. The x-factor is freshman Jase Richardson, who has scored over 10 points in three straight games, including a 29-point outburst in the win over Oregon.
With the regular season winding down, this game will go a long way when determining seeding for the Big Ten Tournament. Find out how to watch the game below, including the start time, channel, and streaming information. Read our NCAA men's basketball March to the Madness guide for more information.

Purdue vs. Michigan State: How to watch
Tom Izzo on getting most wins in Big Ten conference play: 'I'd trade it all for a banner'

Read more
If you have to watch one Hulu movie in February 2025, stream this one
Meg Ryan sits at a computer in You've Got Mail.

Unless you grew up during the internet's stone age, then you may have never heard the "You've got mail" voice that used to play when AOL users got an email. In its heyday, AOL was omnipresent on the web, and its catchphrase was the inspiration for the 1998 romantic comedy You've Got Mail, which is our pick for the one Hulu movie that you need to watch in February.

Valentine's Day is in the rear-view mirror, but a good rom-com is always seasonal. The late Nora Ephron -- who was one of the best female directors -- co-wrote You've Got Mail with her sister, Delia Ephron, while taking inspiration from the 1940 romance flick, The Shop Around the Corner.

Read more
25 years ago, Vin Diesel had the best day of his career
Vin Diesel looks cool in black goggles and a black tank top in a still from the movie Pitch Black.

Vin Diesel in Pitch Black USA Films
More than almost any other movie star working today, Vin Diesel seems to think only in franchises. Skim the last two decades of this muscle man’s filmography, and you’ll see almost nothing but sequels or movies designed (not always successfully) to spawn sequels. Once Vin got a taste of life in the fast lane, he never really looked back. Maybe he was always just destined to become a Hollywood action hero: When you’re built like a bullet and talk like a subwoofer, the Italian Stallion career path makes a lot more sense than anything else.
Of course, like Sly Stallone, Vin didn’t start out making multiplex cash grabs. Before he was Dominic Toretto, Xander Cage, and Groot, Diesel was a hungry young actor, more focused on honing his craft than bulging his biceps. In the ’90s, he even dabbled in writing and directing, penning his own gritty, calling-card starring vehicle; it was that indie drama, Strays, that caught Steven Spielberg’s attention and earned Diesel a breakout role in Saving Private Ryan. To watch him there or in the late Sidney Lumet’s swan song, Find Me Guilty, is to be reminded of a time when the big guy aspired to a little more than bankable machismo.
What’s wild is that you can pinpoint to the day the pinnacle of Diesel’s time as a dramatic performer as opposed to a box-office draw. Said day was 25 years ago tomorrow, when not one but two movies featuring the future star hit theaters nationwide. There he was as a likable off- Wall Street stock broker in the financial drama Boiler Room, and there he was again as a mythic outlaw in the deep-space creature feature Pitch Black. Diesel has never been better than he was in these two very different movies, which kind of makes February 18th, 2000 the best day of his career — and also the last moment before that career changed directions.
Boiler Room (2000) Official Trailer #1 - Vin Diesel Movie HD
Of the two films, Boiler Room is the more obvious acting showcase, though Vin has a much smaller part in it. Written and directed by Ben Younger, this Martin Scorsese-indebted procedural essentially fictionalizes the true story the actual Scorsese would later dramatize with The Wolf of Wall Street. Younger looks at the fraudulent practices of brokerage houses like Stratton Oakmont from the perspective of one of the cold callers, a Long Island entrepreneur played by Giovanni Ribisi. Maybe fourth or fifth booked in the cast is Diesel, who steps in as one of the more experienced brokers who takes Ribisi’s snake-oil salesman under his wing.
“He’s like gravity —everything gets pulled to him,” is how someone describes Diesel’s most famous character, Dominic Toretto, in the following year’s franchise-launching melodrama The Fast and the Furious. But he’s much more conventionally magnetic in Boiler Room as a slick but approachable young millionaire swindler. Vin’s first big scene in the movie puts his signature bravado to good use, as he gregariously coerces a doctor into buying a bunch of shares over the phone — a hard sell that he makes look effortless. It’s a kind of initiation, laying out the seductive thrill of how these chop-shop frat boys make their fortune. They’re really just actors, playing a part for the clients they unscrupulously exploit.
Diesel’s Chris Varick, like Toretto, is as much teddy bear as shark, though. Boiler Room positions him as a big brother for Ribisi— the warm alternative to Nicky Katt’s jealous, competitive bullpen prick. The script’s pages of shop talk (the kind of industry exposition that Scorsese waved off with a fourth-wall-breaking wink from Leo) go down smoother when delivered in Diesel’s low rumble and New York accent. And Chris becomes an unlikely figure of redemption at the ending, confronted by both the impending collapse of his livelihood and the opportunity to do one noble thing before it all comes crashing down. That makes Boiler Room the first in a long line of movies that find the conscience burning within Diesel’s bad-boy routine.
Pitch Black Official Trailer #1 - Vin Diesel Movie (2000) HD
A secret flicker of decency also defines Richard B. Riddick, the apprehended mercenary Diesel plays for the first time in Pitch Black. In terms of temperament and vocabulary, he’s a much different animal than Varick: a stony Western archetype unleashed onto the final frontier, like Clint Eastwood’s Man with No Name airdropped into an Alien knockoff. Writer-director David Twohy builds Riddick up, establishing his fearsome bona fides by keeping him chained, shrouded in darkness, and silent for the first act, when the ship carting this dangerous fugitive crash-lands on a planet with three suns and some deadly nocturnal wildlife. Beyond the opening voice-over, Diesel doesn’t utter a word for the first 30 minutes of the movie.
More than Toretto, that marble-mouthed, messianic Robin Hood patriarch always mumbling about family, Riddick is the quintessential Vin Diesel character. Twohy leans on and inflates his comic-book physicality – the bulkiness that caught the actor bouncer gigs before he went Hollywood. And he streamlines that familiar Diesel braggadocio into a cucumber cool, the poise of a post-human bruiser in touch with his wild side. His performance in Pitch Black arguably comes closer to approximating the original conception of Wolverine than the one Hugh Jackman would deliver, for the first time, a few months later in the first X-Men movie. Diesel is so convincing here as an animalistic loner that his eventual, reluctant call to be a team-player, à la Logan, packs the desired punch.
Less blockbuster than glorified sci-fi programmer, Pitch Black didn’t make boatloads of money. But it was a successful proof of concept; what it sold the world was Diesel’s suitability for action-hero duty. Those who caught the movie in theaters, maybe even on a double bill with Boiler Room, could clearly see into his future as a post-millennial Rambo. But few of the big Hollywood projects that followed better capitalized on his rugged, monosyllabic qualities. No wonder Diesel returned to the film’s treacherous star system, reprising the role in two sequels — the goofier, more expansive Chronicles of Riddick and the back-to-basics Riddick — even after he had moved on to more lucrative multi-picture engagements.
Boiler Room Prospecting Scene - Vin Diesel Closing
In retrospect, 2000 was as much a last hurrah as it was a highpoint for Vin Diesel, the actor, not the brand. A year later, he’d buckle in for the comparably low-key first entry in a series he’d eventually makeover into a multi-billion-dollar vanity project. There was really no turning back from the road Fast & Furious put him on. It’s been basically all intellectual-property bids since, as Diesel has balanced his cash cow franchise with attempts to develop new ones. You have to strain to see any real artistic ambition in any of the work he’s done since the day the multiplex served up double, clashing doses of his cowboy swagger. Besides a supporting role in Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, it’s been one star sleepwalk after another.
Maybe Diesel never had a character actor's range. As a performer, he mostly offers different shades of macho — brooding, sentimental, or arrogant as needed. But on one winter day at the start of a new century, he demonstrated that his particular steroidal charisma could be stretched a little, and applied to projects with wildly different aims. February 18 was a crossroads for this modern tough guy. He took the path to marquee immortality that Pitch Black opened up before him, while leaving us wondering how many Boiler Rooms he bypassed along the way.
Boiler Room and Pitch Black are both available to rent or purchase from the major digital services. For more of A.A. Dowd’s writing, visit his Authory page.

Read more