In The Greatest Showman, Rebecca Ferguson’s opera star, Jenny Lind, sings “Never Enough,” and those words have never rang more true than with Silo.
The series, based on post-apocalyptic books by Hugh Howey and produced by and starring Ferguson, is a gripping mystery/thriller about an underground, self-sufficient Silo and its increasingly anxious inhabitants. And each episode leaves audiences wanting more.
If you haven’t watched it, be prepared. This show freely throws around overly serious, somewhat vague/nonsensical phrases like “the before times,” “Freedom Day” and “The Flamekeepers;” however, the series packs serious twists and star power, with the likes of Ferguson, Rashida Jones, David Oyelowo and even Jorah Mormont himself (Game of Thrones’ Iain Glen). And like the early seasons of Game of Thrones, no one is safe.
Rebecca Ferguson is here to take all of your TV-watching time with fire and blood. For me, the “before times” is before I watched Silo. —BB
6. Beef, Netflix
In Ray Bradbury’s famous short story “A Sound of Thunder,” one person crushes a butterfly after a quick cruise in a time machine, and the act goes on to change the course of history.
In Beef, that butterfly turns out to be a bird—namely, Ali Wong’s Amy Lau flipping the bird—leading to an ever-escalating, all-out battle between her and Steven Yeun’s Danny Cho, showing how one small incident changes both their worlds forever.
The series—which was one of Netflix’s most-viewed titles in its What We Watched report, coming in at around 221,100,000 hours viewed—explores class issues, Eastern and Western cultural differences, childhood and generational traumas and, above all, why people should be nice on the road. (Please don’t honk at me.) —BB