# Severance (2022)

> Office workers whose memories are surgically split between job and home begin to uncover the sinister truth behind their company.

Canonical page: https://ember.film/tv/80546

## Facts

- Seasons: 3
- Episodes: 19
- Episode runtime: 50 min
- Status: Returning Series
- Genres: drama, science fiction, mystery, thriller
- Created by: Dan Erickson
- Network: Apple TV
- Cast: Adam Scott, Britt Lower, Tramell Tillman, Zach Cherry, Patricia Arquette, Jen Tullock, Michael Chernus, Dichen Lachman
- TMDB rating: 8.6/10
- IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11280740/

## Ember's analysis

- Pacing: measured
- Intensity: moderate
- Complexity: dense
- Violence: mild
- Tone: eerie, cerebral, claustrophobic, unsettling, deadpan, tense

## What critics say

Audiences broadly acclaim the series for its mood, unsettling mystery, cinematography and sharp workplace satire, though some find its slow burn and cold style hard to warm to.

## Synopsis

Severance (2022-present) is an American Apple TV science fiction mystery series created by Dan Erickson. Mark Scout (Adam Scott) leads a team of office workers whose memories have been surgically divided between their work lives and their personal lives, so each employee's working self never knows their home self. Helly Riggs (Britt Lower) joins his team and pushes the group toward questions they are not allowed to ask, while the company's enigmatic manager Seth Milchick (Tramell Tillman) keeps everything calm and orderly. The engine of the show is the widening gap between what the workers are told and what they can see, as an encounter outside the office sets off a search for the truth about their jobs. Episodes move at a deliberate, slow-burn pace, with each hour built from unsettling corporate rituals, cryptic reveals and quiet personal dread. Its tone is eerie, cerebral and claustrophobic, with an atmosphere of sterile symmetry and existential unease. Themes of identity, entrapment and corporate control run through its plot. Fans of Lost, The X-Files and Black Mirror will find resonance in its puzzle-box mysteries and its unsettling vision of modern work. Across two seasons, the series has grown into a tightly serialized, mind-bending saga.

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