The verdict
The best high-concept series on television, built on one clear idea and executed with total control.
Quick facts
- Years aired
- 2022 to
- Based on
- an original idea by Dan Erickson
- The premise
- a procedure that separates a person's work memories from their personal ones
- Where to watch
- Apple TV+
- Genre
- Science fiction, workplace thriller
Creator Dan Erickson
Severance is a science fiction series about a medical procedure that lets an employee separate his work memories from his personal ones, by splitting himself into two people who share a body and have never met. It takes the phrase work-life balance literally, and then follows it somewhere genuinely unsettling.
The idea behind it
Lumon Industries offers its staff a choice: undergo severance, and the version of you who goes to work will have no memory of your life outside, while the version at home will have no memory of the office. Neither has to think about the other. The company calls this work-life balance.
Every good idea in the series grows out of that arrangement. The person inside the building is a prisoner who does not know a world exists, and the person outside has chosen not to look. Consent, exploitation and grief all follow from a single piece of technology that people were asked to sign for, which is what makes it more than a dystopian setup.
The story, spoiler-light
Mark Scout works in a department called Macrodata Refinement, where four people sort numbers that appear on a screen into groups that appear to mean something. Nobody explains the numbers. Outside the building, Mark is grieving a death, and he took the job because it would keep eight hours of his day away from his own memory.
Two things are worth knowing before you start. The series is as much workplace comedy as thriller, and the office humour is precise: fluorescent lighting, passive-aggressive memos, rewards handed out as waffles. And the science fiction is deliberately narrow, which makes the questions it raises sharper rather than softer.
What makes it science fiction
One piece of technology, applied to one problem, with every consequence followed honestly. The procedure is not explained, and it is not meant to be: what matters is that it works, that it cannot be reversed cheaply, and that both halves of a severed person are entitled to be treated as people.
The production design does a great deal of the work. Lumon’s offices are a period pastiche, all beige corridors and sixties modernist furniture, with a religious undertone that gets more explicit as the series goes on. It is one of the most distinctive visual worlds on television, and it was assembled from almost nothing that needed a visual effects budget.
Who should watch it, and who should skip it
Watch it if you want a series with a real idea at the centre and actors who are clearly enjoying themselves. Adam Scott, Britt Lower, John Turturro and Zach Cherry carry the office scenes, and the two-hander at the heart of the premise is better than anything the concept promises.
Skip it if you want explanations. The series withholds almost everything and answers very little, deliberately, and viewers who need the machinery to add up by the end of a season will find that maddening rather than intriguing.
Where to watch it
It is an Apple TV+ original, and the link below goes to it on Amazon. It is a series that rewards attention rather than background viewing, because most of what it is doing is in the details of the office.
The verdict
The best high-concept series on television, built on one clear idea and executed with total control. Watch it for the office and stay for what the office is doing.
Frequently asked questions
What is severance in the show?
A surgical procedure that separates a person’s work memories from their personal ones, creating two versions of the same individual: an innie, who only ever experiences the office, and an outie, who only ever experiences the rest of life.
Is Severance science fiction or a thriller?
Both, with a strong streak of workplace comedy. The science fiction is narrow and specific, which is why it works: one technology, one consequence, followed all the way through.
Where can I watch Severance?
It is an Apple TV+ series, and the link on this page goes to it on Amazon.
Does it explain what the numbers mean?
Slowly, and not completely. The series is more interested in what the work does to the people doing it than in the mechanics of the work itself.
Is it suitable for younger viewers?
It is aimed at adults. There is some violence and a sustained atmosphere of threat inside the workplace, and the themes are about consent and exploitation.