With black goo and baby goats, this workplace thriller was tantalisingly weird – and proved that Ben Stiller is one of the most interesting directors working in TV right now
Photograph: Wilson Webb/Apple TV+Photograph: Wilson Webb/Apple TV+he timing was almost suspicious. Right as workers started shuffling back into the office at the end of the Omicron surge, Apple TV+ released a show that seemed to capture all those heightened tensions over our relationship with work, and play, and which of the two takes primacy, then condense them into one highly bingeable product.
OK, there’s a more likely explanation for all that prescience: the themes at the heart of Severance have pretty much always been relevant. TV has long been fascinated with humanity’s fragile relationship with work, right back to when Lucille Ball wasto avoid getting fired. But what Severance did was infuse those perennial concerns with some very modern ones: corporate malfeasance, data harvesting, bodily autonomy.
Severance’s premise is almost bewilderingly high-concept: what would life be like if you could divide your brain so your work memories were separate from your non-work ones? Employees at Lumon Industries opt into a process where they are essentially split into two selves: an “innie” and an “outie”. The innie has no memory of life outside the workplace, the outie remembers nothing outside their leisure hours. A tantalising prospect, you might think – but only if you’re the outie.
Confused? Fair enough! Still, at a time where so many shows are guilty of hand-holding, Severance should be praised for its absolute refusal to do so. This is a series that wants you to play detective and pore over every last detail looking for clues as to what’s really going on at Lumon.
For all its curious qualities, Severance never feels less than engrossing. That’s down to the performances, which fill Lumon’s sterile hallways with warmth and pathos.
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