Since it first aired in 2019, Severance has been one of Apple TV’s flagship shows. It’s a stylish sci-fi thriller about the results of a pilot ‘severance’ procedure undertaken by mega corporation, Lumon. ‘Severance’ surgically divides the consciousness of Lumon’s employees into two so that their ‘work selves’ and their ‘home selves’ share a body, but not a mind. The result is a set of main characters with split consciousnesses: half the time trapped inside their sprawling basement office, the other half living in complete ignorance of their work lives.
It’s a gripping and original premise which, in series 1, sends the audience off in all sorts of interesting and delightfully disturbing directions as we follow the stories of the ‘severed’ employees, most of whom, it becomes clear, have volunteered for the procedure to escape profound pain in their personal lives.
The reason why this procedure exists at all is unknown. In fact, the mysterious Lumon corporation that is the show’s ultimate antagonist remains mysterious. Lumon’s senior staff are deeply authoritarian, and perhaps a bit culty, but they’re largely confined to the shadows.
In series 2, which aired early this year, this focus shifts. This time, the audience witnesses the internal politics of Lumon, which – you’d think – might promise us some kind of insight into what is really driving them to so brutally exploit their staff.
Cults may be interesting, but they’re also a storytelling cheat, because you can justify practically any behaviour or motive with: ‘because of the cult.’
But it’s a disappointing shift, because it soon becomes apparent that the senior management of Lumon are not just weird and culty. They are quite literally a cult, with all the classic cult hallmarks – the robotic speech, the biblical-sounding mantras, the obsessive devotion to their long-dead founder, even a weird moment involving the coerced eating of raw eggs. The cultishness is so exaggerated that the function of these characters actually verges on the comedic, rather than the dramatic.
At no point do we witness these antagonists have a normal conversation, in which people discuss, in comprehensible terms, the reason for anything that is happening. At no point do we really understand what is behind the severance project, beyond the invisible and outlandish imperatives of the cult.
Cults may be interesting, but they’re also a storytelling cheat, because you can justify practically any behaviour or motive with: ‘because of the cult.’
In the case of Severance, they become a more significant kind of cheat. Because, believe it or not, cults are not what you find at the heart of exploitative corporations. What you do find – and what Severance is curiously uninterested in – is financial incentive.
Watching Severance, I couldn’t help but feel furious about how audaciously Apple manages to sidestep any serious conversation about extractive capitalism.
As Apple well knows, there is perfect logic to the exploitation of vulnerable workers. It is not the product of deranged impulses; it is good business. Likewise, there’s no need to build a complicated cult in order to make your senior staff carry out or be passive bystanders to that exploitation. There’s no need for a messiah founder. There is only the expectation of profit.
It would have been optimistic to think that Apple, a tech giant with a revenue of $416 billion and a long track record of reported labour rights abuse, was ready to explore what really happens in the boardrooms of a fictional evil mega corporation. But watching Severance, I couldn’t help but feel furious about how audaciously Apple manages to sidestep any serious conversation about extractive capitalism.
According to this show, the enemy isn’t human greed and the capitalist system which nurtures it. It is extreme psychological manipulation. It is weirdos. But don’t worry guys, you can be sure there aren’t any raw-egg-eating, messiah-worshipping weirdos working at Apple. They’re just your average, harmless, money-hungry executives.
In the real world, then, I guess we’re all safe.
We’re heading for a market made up exclusively of US streaming platforms, where the only stories we see on television are those that fit the proto-capitalist agendas of the multinational companies that own them.
Weeks after watching series 2 of Severance, I read a news article in which various BBC and ITV producers lamented the declining funding in the UK industry. According to one producer, a series like Mr Bates vs the Post Office, broadcast by ITV at the start of 2024 and widely credited with renewing the fight for justice of the Post Office scandal’s victims, would now be considered too expensive for UK broadcasters to produce. Over the course of a few years, financing what was once a standard cost series has become impossible for anyone who isn’t a streaming giant.
This paints a bleak picture of the TV landscape we’re heading for: a market made up exclusively of US streaming platforms, where the only stories we see on television are those that fit (or at least do not disrupt) the proto-capitalist agendas of the multinational companies – Apple, Amazon – that own them.
Like other forms of storytelling, TV is where we go for narratives which empower us to question the status quo.
When those narratives are censored – consciously or not – by the most powerful in our society in order to protect their own interests, our resources for challenging that power are eroded.
Maybe the creators of Severance genuinely weren’t interested in talking about extractive capitalism. And that’s fine. But in a TV landscape where most of what we watch has been funded by the world’s biggest companies, who do you reckon will be?