Silo Meets Under The Dome In Paramount+'s 2-Part Underrated Dystopian Sci-Fi Series

Under the Dome and Silo meet in a two-season, dystopian sci-fi show that deserves much more appreciation than it gets. The sci-fi mystery genre has created some gems over the years, including the gloriously pulpy Stephen King show Under the Dome, which ran from 2013 to 2015, and the contemplative and terrifying series Silo, which is ongoing on Apple TV+. The two claustrophobic series center on an isolated community experiencing paranoia and fear because of dwindling resources and social division. They both have the core question, “How did we get here?”

However, Silo’s origin is post-apocalyptic, while Under the Dome‘s is alien. Silo exists over 300 years after the inciting incident, when the population has forgotten what the world used to look like. Under the Dome is set in modern day, and the characters remember the world before the dome. Both shows might explore corruption and abuse of power, but they approach it in distinct ways.

CBS’s TV show Jericho, now available on Paramount+, has the best of both sci-fi worlds. Even though Jericho came before both Under the Dome and Silo, it feels like the writers took the DNA of both and spliced them together to create a show that really deserves more recognition.

Jericho Is Better Than Its Rotten Tomatoes Score Suggests

Even though it’s a cult classic TV show, Jericho has a shockingly mediocre Rotten Tomatoes score. Critics looked down on the show for its mundane approach to the post-apocalyptic genre and its reliance on tropes, considering it lowbrow. However, they failed to recognize that tropes work for a reason, and cheesy sci-fi is basically a staple of the genre. What’s more, Jericho was unfairly compared to Lost, since both were on the air at the same time. Lost’s masterpiece status made Jericho look bad in comparison.

Jericho Rotten Tomatoes Critic Scores
Season 1	48%
Season 2	60%

However, all comparisons and unfair judgments aside, Jericho is a really compelling post-apocalyptic TV show with a great central mystery and characters that are easy to care about. Some twists are predictable, with two decades of storytelling trends to look at, but that doesn’t make them any less satisfying. What’s more, the choice to focus on realism and the mundane actually heightens the impact because they make a very high-concept premise and turns it into something we could potentially relate to.

The fairest criticism against Jericho is that the second season feels rushed and overly packed. Plus, the ending felt incomplete. That’s part of why it doesn’t rank quite as high as other post-apocalyptic shows. However, these big issues weren’t the creative team’s fault but the network’s. They did the best they could in an extremely condensed season.

Why Jericho Only Lasted 2 Seasons

Even though Jericho was phenomenal, the show only lasted two seasons onscreen. When I attended Denver Fan Expo 2026 on behalf of ScreenRant, which was the convention’s official media partner, Skeet Ulrich shared more information about why that occurred during the Q&A portion of the Scream panel. He said this:

“Lost was on at that time and was very big, and they were in their fourth season…we were shooting 22 episodes, and so was Lost, and they took a two-month break between the 11th and 12th episodes. So Jericho’s marketing team was like, ‘We’re going to do that.’ And they didn’t tell the audience that that was the plan, nor did they relaunch the show when it was coming back.
So we went from having 13 million viewers to having about ten, and at CBS at that time, they’re like, ‘you lost—you don’t have an audience.’ And so they canceled it, and then the fans revolted. And they revolted so much to the extent that it was the first show brought back from cancellation in 26 years, at that point.
And the only provision for CBS was, ‘you have to wrap it up in 7 episodes, and we’re cutting your budget in half. We’re cutting your shooting days. You gotta wrap it up in 7 episodes.’ So, those 7 episodes of season 2 are literally 3 seasons worth of material condensed into 7 episodes.”

Ultimately, Jericho’s early cancellation had less to do with the lack of interest and more to do with the asinine decision to split the season up without telling the audience. Of course, there’s going to be a drop-off in numbers. The audience’s grassroots campaign, which involved sending letters and peanuts to CBS, might have saved it for one more season, but it wasn’t enough. Even if the second season somehow received the best possible ratings, the Writers’ Strike of 2007 to 2008 meant they couldn’t plan for more episodes beyond the initial seven.

The story didn’t end with Jericho’s series finale, though. After the show ended on CBS, the story continued as a comic book series, picked up by IDW Comics, which also put out the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Sonic the Hedgehog.

Jericho season 3 consisted of six comics, written by Dan Shotz and Robert Levine, with contributions from Jason M. Burns and Matthew Federman, and illustrated by Alerjandro F. Giralbo. Jericho season 4 consisted of five comics, written by Kalinda Vasquez, with guidance from the TV writers, and illustrated by Andrew Currie. Unfortunately, these stories probably won’t ever make it to the TV screen. If it ever came back, it would likely be a reboot, partly because so much time has passed since Jericho‘s season 2 finale.