In the fantastic series ‘Severance’ no one knows what work he does outside office hours ★★★★★

The English word severance has a variety of meanings, but in the title of the fantastic new dystopian drama on Apple TV Plus, it refers to a specific medical procedure performed by Lumon Industries. On a voluntary basis, employees of the fictitious biotech company can have a chip inserted that creates a hard separation (severance) between office hours and beyond.

In the labyrinthine space of the company you don’t know who you are out there; outside you don’t know what you’re doing inside the walls. je innie do you know outie not and vice versa, in the lingo of the series. That Severance One of the best series from the young streamer is Apple TV Plus, part of tech giant Apple Inc., of course, the irony meter immediately goes into the red.

For the company, the benefits seem obvious. Severance creates totally dedicated office slaves, who will never leak company secrets because they simply have no idea what they are doing during office hours. Inside and out, the series initially follows Mark Scout (Adam Scott, known for fans of the comedy classic Parks and Recreation† For him, the procedure is an apparent way out of the mourning in which he was plunged after the death of his wife.

What immediately catches the eye is the spectacular design of the series, in which the entrails of Lumon Industries in particular appear to be an almost endless open-plan labyrinth. This is accentuated by the beautiful, minimalist music of Theodore Shapiro. And while the Severance technology is science fiction, the look of the office, including the chunky computers with monochrome screens, has been taken back to the 1980s and 1990s. The makers already reported that their great example is the office from the masterpiece Playtime by Jacques Tati; a shiny glass prison for the worker bee.

And what are they actually doing there, at Lumon Industries? Mark and his small team look at strings of numbers on their screen, group numbers that make them feel ‘fearful’, then dump them into a reservoir. Very specific, and at the same time totally abstract. The whole so-called work process seems like a metaphor for how people view tech companies; those gigantic juggernauts, who on the outside present a new world order with their shiny gadgets and algorithms, but are mainly responsible for a dark undercurrent. Because what happens to your data; isn’t that just as opaque as Lumon’s shuffling of series of numbers?

From the first episode stays Severance surprise with the direction the story takes. With the nail-biting final episode, there are still countless outstanding issues. You can also say that the story has only really started when some of those innies finally find out who they are out there. And let’s take a look at the top actors who come along, with John Turturro and Patricia Arquette leading the way, with a brilliant little role for legend Christopher Walken.

Already in the first episode, as the world of Severance unfolds to us, the first cracks appear in the shiny surface of Lumon Industries. A new member of the team (the wonderful Britt Lower as Helly Riggs) arrives who, unlike her male colleagues, refuses to abide by the company’s rules of the game, and Mark Scout is approached outside by a man who introduces himself as his best friend within the walls. It causes a mental landslide that is starting to get more and more surrealistic. We can’t wait for the second season.