All-star casts on the telly? Two a penny, these days. Still, cop a load of the talent gathered up for Silo, Apple TV+’s latest dystopian drama series: Tim Robbins, Common, Harriet Walter. That’s three. David Oyelowo, Rashida Jones, Rebecca Ferguson make another top trio. Launched recently to much fervour at Canneseries, Silo is based on a set of post-apocalyptic sci-fi books penned by Hugh Howey, the first of which was published back in the (comparatively speaking) rose-tinted halcyon days of 2011.

It asks a simple yet devastating question: if the last few thousand people on the planet are living inside a vast agricultural structure, what is so bad out there that they’d rather carry on in this way? Here’s another one to ponder: are the rules and regulations laid down by authorities for the inhabitants of this curious civilisation put there to protect them or to keep them in servitude? A juicy one for the conspiracists among us to get some teeth into, for sure.

This safe haven becomes a little less cosy (the drama’s original title was to be Wool) when several unexplained deaths occur in the wake of an edict being broken. Smelling some very pungent if metaphorical rats, engineer Juliette (Ferguson) takes it upon herself to investigate and, sure enough, the dark underbelly of this community begins to be exposed.

Available now.