The twisty Apple TV+ thriller creates one hell of a work/life balance.
In your grownup life you pick up a lot of talking about secern your home from your problem , produce a " work / life balance " so that you do n’t catch yourself doing chore during the hours you ’re supposed to be off , and so that the personal never bleeds into the professional . It ’s a sublime pursuance made even more difficult by the modern years ’s province of constant connectivity — not to mention the current berth still forcing tidy sum to forge from our plate . If only there was a way to separate our jobs from our societal animation that was as round-eyed as , say , a quotidian genius operation that ’s over in a matter of minutes . severing , thebrilliant thriller series on Apple TV+created by Dan Erickson and directed in part by Ben Stiller , offers just such a result , its office monotone undergoing a procedure that for good blocks their office hold up from their home lives . Of naturally , nothing is so simple .
Mark ( Adam Scott ) is employed at Lumon Industries , a company so secret its own proletarian are n’t allow to know what it does . They are oblige to undergo " severance , " a one - time routine that altogether pass over their memories of anything they do while in the office ( locate down in the cellar of the construction , naturally ) . What they ’re not tell is that , for palisade off one section of their memory from another , severance basically manifests an entirely new personality that lives , trapped , inside their head , existing only within their office level . Because they ’ve been " lop , " their original out - of - part selves have no idea .
The worry begins when a raw employee , Helly ( Britt Lower ) , realizes immediately upon entering the billet that she want to get outta there . But , no matter what she tries , her original self ( touch on to as her " outie " ) wo n’t allow her to depart . Stuck in the windowless office in the middle of a maze of fluorescent - lit corridors with only her coworkers — rumpled people - pleaser Mark , conspiracy theorist Dylan ( Zach Cherry ) , pious Lumon scripture - quoting Irving ( John Turturro ) , and their terrifying coach Milchick ( Tramell Tillman)—for company , Helly plot her escapes daily , ingest more and more drastic measures to attempt to tell her other self that her " innie " is miserable . Meanwhile , Mark is on his own quest to uncover the secrets of Lumon , matching mental capacity with his severe and sinister boss Ms. Cobell ( Patricia Arquette ) , and unknowingly dragging his loth innie into the fray .
Patricia Arquette and Tramell Tillman in ‘Severance’|Apple TV+
Aside from the immediately absorbing plot , Severancehas manage to establish an full world inside an office , constructing a mappa mundi of white - tile Marguerite Radclyffe Hall , carpeted cell , and a delightfully analog tech aesthetic that sets it somewhere betweenOffice SpaceandBeing John Malkovich . The tone is a hideous and hilarious parody of position spirit and its gonzo intricacy ; employees are , intellectually , little more than children forced to bandy about strange collective Newspeak . Their work at Lumon involve make clean up data point that appears in derisory number matrix , good body of work is rewarded with melon vine bars and " music - dancing experiences , " and naughty ruler - dampen employee are direct to the dungeon - like " break way . "
The real joyousness ( and revulsion ) ofSeveranceis in its constantly expanding mythos , each episode pop the question a new puzzle bit , these novel second of knowledge utterly doled out , that give up for a broader understanding of the whole . The questions the series excogitate out of thin zephyr invite its audience to tangle themselves in Escher stairs of complexity : What do we owe to ourselves if ourselves are not really ourselves ? What price do you put on freedom if it wipe off the macrocosm of another ? If you separate one panorama of yourself from another , do you make new life?Severancecreates a unused hell out of corporate mundanity that leads to a genuinely nail - nipping last few installment that dexterously set up the possibility for more . And you ’ll need more immediately .
Tramell Tillman, Zach Cherry, John Turturro, Britt Lower and Adam Scott in ‘Severance’|Apple TV+
