Want to make summer 2025 feel even more disconcerting? Why not do what I’m doing and spend the evenings of the longest days watching Severance, which is set in a mysterious dark corporate netherworld where the sun never shines, and the only light comes from spooky fluorescent strip lights that flicker on and off?
Ah, yes, not for me the flirtatious firepit shenanigans of Love Island or the sweaty kitchen nightmares of The Bear season four. Just give me an unsettling workplace drama set in the dead of winter where the character’s brains have been bisected by a microchip. Then sit back, relax and have an Aperol spritz while you try to figure out what the hell is going on. Cheers!
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If you don’t already know, Severance explores the disturbing world of Lumon, a terrifying L Ron Hubbard-esque family business/corporate cult that does such ‘mysterious and important’ work that, in the interests of secrecy – and/or slavery – some employees opt to work on the Severed floor. That means they have a procedure that separates them into innies (work personas) and outies (their true selves).
Neither have any knowledge of what the other is doing, and nobody, including the audience, has a clue what Lumon does, either. It seems to have something to do with numbers. Or paintings. Or sacrificial goats. Or forced birth. It doesn’t matter, anyway – this mystery is what keeps the whole thing moving. In fact, the minute we find out what they do, the entire series will have to go into administration.
The protagonist is Mark S (Adam Scott), who opted to be severed after the death of his wife, and of course, it all starts to go Horribly Wrong almost straight away.
