“You have been accused and found guilty (or guilty) of violating the common law of the community. The desire to leave the Sanctuary, however immutable, cannot be undone. Once it rings, it is certain. You will be asked to clean your lenses and you will be provided with the necessary tools for this procedure. But cleaning is completely optional. Once you get out of the airlock, you’re out of the Sanctuary’s jurisdiction. We don’t know why we are in the bunker. We don’t know who built it. We don’t know why the world outside the bunker is the way it is. We don’t know when we can go out. We just know that this day has not come.
This is the last thing a few people have heard, declaring their desire to get out of the giant underground silo-shelter that was supposedly the shelter of the last ten thousand people on earth. Right at the exit of the Sanctuary, there is a camera that broadcasts the outside situation 24 hours a day on the screens on each of the 144 floors of the Shelter. These screens are a parched wasteland. Officially, the brave are not only fired from the door, but also asked to wipe the dusty camera lens. Although this is a voluntary procedure, no one has refused to delete it. On average, a person dies from a fall after three minutes outside the bunker. It is unknown why this is so. According to official data, there was an attempt at a revolution in the Sanctuary 140 years ago. The rebellion was suppressed (since then this date is celebrated as Freedom Day), but the rebels managed to destroy all existing archives. Almost all of the knowledge that humanity has accumulated over the years has been lost.
Not trying to get out is the main law, but not the only law, of the Refuge, which, like any regime close to a self-respecting totalitarian, seeks to regulate and regulate as many aspects of human life as possible. It is not allowed to have children without permission (for this, devices that prevent childbearing functions are attached to the body of all women). It is impossible to mechanize movement around the bunker (there is no elevator, only on foot). You cannot create optical devices that enlarge the image beyond the allowable limit. You cannot hide relics – that is, pre-revolutionary items. In general, many things are impossible.
However, the ten thousand residents of the Refuge mostly agree to live by these rules – and in general, they do not even consider that everything is somehow inhumane: the local regime disguises itself quite well as a democracy and because, for example, it divides its power into several branches – here there is a mayor, here there is a sheriff, here there are “lawyers”, but there is a nuance, as they say, because these same “lawyers” quite cheerfully combine the judicial, legislative and executive functions.
The Shelter series itself also combines many things with one thing. For the first half hour, it seems like it’s trying to fit in with Apple TV+’s wildly pretentious and unbearably boring fiction series (from Invasion to Asimov’s Founding) and then suddenly remembers it’s supposed to be a great show – and so it stays until the end. “Shelter” pulls everything from various dystopias, something from Orwell to Zamyatin, something newer like “Through the Snow” and you can find fault here, but in the end, the show achieves the main thing: it creates a believable fashion. and the interesting world you want to dig and understand.
For this, “Shelter” is drawn to show more tolerance. For example, it should not arise because one must initially endure one and a half pieces of exhibition (i.e. exposure to the exhibition followed by a small, essentially one) exhibition; take this in some kind of non-linear narrative, but it’s not a panacea). Main character, mechanical engineer Juliet (Rebecca Ferguson), he has been told throughout his life that he is for some reason unfit for this or that job, but the one who takes it and makes the best of it only comes to the screen at the very end of the pilot. In a word, Shelter is in the harness for quite some time, but it’s worth the wait: then the show moves pretty fast and fills in more genres with dystopia – from family drama to police detective (metaphor on the spot with partners) and political thriller. Of course, life in a totalitarian society is very lively – for example, mid-season there is a heart-warming dialogue about complicity with the regime.
As always, it’s not entirely clear who to thank first. Maybe Hugh Howey, the author of the original book: The Bunker series, is something like American Metro 2033, it all started with personal publishing and ended with a pile of bestsellers. Or the showrunner Graham Yost, who wrote the scripts for the so-called “action-packed” action movies of the ’90s (“Speed” with Keanu Reeves, “Broken Arrow” with John Travolta and Christian Slater, “Downpour” with Morgan Freeman and again) Slater ) and then worked with Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks on Band of Brothers and The Pacific, filmed Elmore Leonard (TV series Justice), produced The Americans – had a pretty eventful life overall and apparently executed, all the skills acquired over many years of career. Or maybe the entire cast led by Ferguson (okay, almost the entire cast: rapper Common looks pretty ridiculous here with his leather jacket and a rapper’s habits). Perhaps thanks to the entire script team for solving “The Sanctuary” in advance – a puzzle with 144 floors of asterisks.
One way or another, you should thank all of these people, and possibly someone else, because with their efforts in the Apple TV+ arsenal who wants to be the new HBO while everyone else wants to be the new Netflix, the late Wild World West has pretty much replaced it” (the level of the early seasons). Of course it’s funny: All that was needed was to subvert the American dream, naturally in the sense of tearing down a skyscraper.