Why Severance Is the Best Thing Streaming Right Now

Apple TV Severance, created by Dan Erickson and directed by Ben Stiller, imagines a procedure that surgically separates your work memories from your personal life. Your innie exists only at the office, born anew every morning. Your outie has no memory of work. The premise is sci-fi, but the commentary on work-life balance is brutally real.

Adam Scott Mark Scout leads a team of severed employees at Lumon Industries, a corporation whose retro-futuristic offices and cultish corporate culture create one of the most unsettling workplaces in television history.

The genius of Severance is that it literalizes the psychological compartmentalization that modern work demands. The innies have no context for why they do their jobs. They cannot leave. They have no rights.

Season One finale is one of the most perfectly constructed episodes of television in recent memory. The tension builds across multiple converging storylines to a crescendo that left audiences physically shouting at their screens.

The ensemble, including Zach Cherry, Britt Lower, John Turturro, and Christopher Walken, brings warmth and specificity to what could have been a cold conceptual exercise.

Stream on Apple TV+ at https://tv.apple.com/us/show/severance. Season Two continued the story with equal ambition.

Severance is essential viewing because it takes a high-concept premise and uses it to say something genuinely profound about how we live and work. It is the kind of show people will still be discussing decades from now.