Severance: The Complete Seasons 1-2 (SF TV series review)
Now here’s a weird SF TV series called ‘Severance’ that one of my reviewers said she was enjoying and I ought to look at. The employees of Lumen, which is half the town, have to submit to a brain implant and have a different or reduced business personality when they work inside their building because what they are working on is sensitive and classified. All done above board voluntarily and your outtie lose 8 hours of your life each day to your other innie personality and actually likes it because it pays well.
As Hellie R (actress Britt Lower), a new recruit and disturbed by what she discovers you can’t quit of take a piece of paper saying so because you’re scanned in the lift and penalised or your outie will record a message to tell you you can’t quit. You can’t get out only your outtie can do that.
Fortunately, newly promoted team leader, Mark S (actor Adam Scott), takes the flak for this. We get to see Mark in the building and out with his outtie personality, a former teacher, living a life believing his wife had died. Feeling disturbed or want to join up? Severance is nothing to do with quitting but not knowing what you’re doing at work because its top secret. The job of the four, including Dylan G (actor Zach Cherry) and Irving B (actor John Turturro), as they locate ‘wrong’ codes on their computer screens. They are ahead of everyone else and get a chance to look around and question whenever someone, for the want of a better word, vanishes. Level 7 where they work has a white décor and you really need to know where you are going to find other departments. Later in the season, you do come across a room devoted to looking after white haired young goats and you don’t want to upset their keepers.
The team we follow discover that there is a means that their innie personalities can be temporary be resurrected outside Lumen to alert the people outside that they aren’t happy.
The results of this are seen in season two and in the opening episode it is jarring when one of the four doesn’t relate what really happened and you know the individual is lying. This is obviously spoiler and the kind of thing which will make you watch the series again loaded with this information. Clearly, things are not what they seem and still no one is exactly wiser to just what this team is actually doing. I mean, they are looking at computer screens picking out numbers that should not be there. About the only thing we really know is that they are the most efficient team getting 100% completed, even when they take so many breaks.
The penultimate two episodes explore characters away from the factory before and after and will make you ponder on how much they have been manipulated.
So much of this series is spoiler and you really have to pay attention to what is going on on the screen, especially the opening credits. It’s the kind of series you’ll watch once, give a few months and watch again. To do otherwise risks punishment and the seventh floor has plenty of that. Just when you think you have some things figured and this is before Cold Harbor, you’re thrown in a different direction and given different insights into other characters. Actors Christopher Walken and Patricia Arquette have supporting roles and work against expected type. Who will you support? Ah, you aren’t qualified to choose although I doubt this business practice will be performed here. Quite what the kid goats are doing there is anyone’s business.
If you’ve only just discovered this series but not gotten around to watching it, don’t delay. I pulled my DVDs from my Chinese source but it is now out here as well and a promise of a third series within 18 months, so don’t stop running. Don’t trust the smiling supervisor who struggles with small words. Your supervisors lie and, for the life of me, what was I doing for the past 8 hours when the pay is so good.
GF Willmetts
February 2026
(pub: Apple TV+, 2025. 6 DVDs 2 seasons 24 * 45 minutes episodes, last episode is 75 minutes. Price: varies. ASIN: 97-5-7479-862-7)
