Apple TV's 2-Part Dystopian Sci-Fi Series Makes Severance Look Small

One of Apple TV’s best science fiction shows manages to make another Apple TV show, Severance, feel small in comparison. Severance has long been considered one of the best shows on Apple TV, and certainly one of the streaming service’s best sci-fi shows. That’s quite high praise, as well, since Apple TV has earned a reputation for great sci-fi shows like For All Mankind, Murderbot, and Foundation.

The praise Severance has achieved is also very well-earned. Everything about Severance is great, from its central mystery to its production quality and the acting performances from the show’s cast. The only bad part about the show is how long it takes for new seasons; there was a nearly three-year wait for season 2, and Severance season 3 is on track to take over a year since the ending of the previous season.

Delays aside, there are very few shows that beat Severance at almost anything. Apple TV, however, has another dystopian science fiction show that manages to make Severance look small: Silo. Based on the novels by Hugh Howey, Silo follows a totalitarian civilization in an underground silo where nothing is what it seems. Like Severance before it, Silo has a great mystery premise, but it’s also so much larger than that.

Silo & Severance Are Both Great Sci-Fi Mystery Box Shows

Severance and Silo are both science fiction mystery box shows, meaning a huge draw of the show itself is its large, complicated, and mysterious plots that viewers get to both investigate and watch unfold. In Severance, that mystery box is the hidden agenda of the Lumon corporation and the truth of the severance procedure. In Silo, it’s the mystery surrounding the silo’s founding, its government, and the cause of the apocalypse that drove humanity underground.

The actual mysteries of Silo and Severance are great and can easily draw viewers in within minutes, but it’s the way those mysteries unravel and the breadcrumbs each show leaves that really makes them special. Silo does a wonderful job of providing new information about the silos and the world above gradually and letting the audience figure things out at an even pace, just as Severance does with its mystery. Each episode feels like an important piece of a puzzle, which makes both shows very easy to get invested in.

Silo and Severance also have great science fiction angles to them. Silo‘s is more clear, given the post-apocalyptic setting, the tyrannical government, and the very silos themselves. It’s perfect for fans of shows like Fallout or The Walking Dead. Severance, meanwhile, has a much less futuristic sci-fi angle to it, especially when it comes to the severance procedure and Lumon’s more shady dealings.

Silo Has A Much Bigger Scale & Scope Than Severance

Again, Severance is a great show from top to bottom. That fact makes it all the more impressive that Silo is able to make Severance feel small in comparison. Severance is, at the end of the day, about one rather large company that is tormenting Mark and a few of his friends at work. It’s wildly engaging, and the personal focus of the show lends a lot to its premise, but it’s relatively very small in scale.

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Silo, on the other hand, is about the fate of humanity as a whole. The show’s mystery is about how humanity was forced to live underground, what happened to the Earth, and entire civilizations of people living in massive silos. If Juliette doesn’t figure out the mystery behind the silos and the apocalypse, millions of people continue to live under tyranny and suffer. If Mark doesn’t figure out the severance procedure, a handful of people live split lives in service of a shadowy organization.

That much larger scale works really well for Silo. It gives the entire series a sense of urgency and dread, and it makes the shadowy forces in power seem all the more dangerous and terrifying. It also uses the widespread effects of its central mystery to create quite a bit more lore than Severance has, which means the mystery box runs deeper and can stay engaging longer. If you liked Severance, Silo basically turns all of its best elements up to 11.