Severance

Severance is an American science-fiction psychological thriller created by Dan Erickson for Apple TV+. It premiered on February 18, 2022, and centers on Lumon Industries, a secretive biotechnology company whose employees can undergo "severance," a brain procedure that partitions work memories from personal ones. The resulting workplace identity, an "innie," knows only the office; the outside identity, an "outie," remembers nothing of the workday. This premise turns an ordinary corporate schedule into a literal divide in consciousness, consent, and accountability. Ben Stiller directed multiple episodes and served as an executive producer; Aoife McArdle also directed episodes in the first season.

Adam Scott plays Mark Scout, a Lumon employee who accepts severance while mourning the apparent death of his wife, Gemma. Inside, Mark leads Macrodata Refinement, where workers sort inexplicable numbers into digital bins according to emotional reactions. His colleagues include Dylan George, played by Zach Cherry; Irving Bailiff, played by John Turturro; and new hire Helly Riggs, played by Britt Lower. Patricia Arquette portrays Mark's supervisor Harmony Cobel, while Christopher Walken plays Burt Goodman, an Optics and Design employee who forms a relationship with Irving. Tramell Tillman appears as Milchick, a manager who enforces Lumon's opaque rules inside its offices.

At the end of the first season, Mark, Helly, and Irving use a contingency protocol to awaken their innies in the outside world. Mark discovers that Gemma is alive and connected to Lumon under the name Ms. Casey, played by Dichen Lachman. Helly learns that her outie is Helena Eagan, daughter of Lumon chief executive Jame Eagan. The finale also reveals Irving's outie investigating Lumon and Dylan remaining at work to sustain the unauthorized switch. These disclosures make the company's family dynasty and experimentation central to the story. Season two continues after the macrodata team's exposure to their outie lives.

Severance received fourteen Primetime Emmy Award nominations for its first season, including Outstanding Drama Series and acting nominations for Scott, Turturro, Walken, and Arquette. Stiller's direction and Theodore Shapiro's score were also nominated. The production's visual identity uses sterile white corridors, green carpets, retro computer terminals, and carefully symmetrical frames to make Lumon's basement feel both comic and threatening. The series was filmed principally in New York State, with the former Bell Labs complex in Holmdel, New Jersey serving as Lumon's exterior. Its second season premiered on Apple TV+ on January 17, 2025, and contains ten episodes released weekly thereafter.