Severance Turns the Workplace Comedy Into a Horror Show

In 2015, the screenwriter Charlie Kaufman said he’d been talking to Ben Stiller about working together. That project fell apart, but the new Apple TV+ series Severance suggests that Stiller, its director, still keenly appreciates Kaufman’s sensibilities. Said padded, locked door is located in the basement level of a sprawling campus of a conglomerate called Lumon Industries, known for pioneering an experimental procedure called “severance,” where a neurological device divides memories into two silos: the work self and the private self. His “innie,” meanwhile, is a sincere, chipper middle-manager, happy enough in his pencil-pushing gig until his best work friend Petey abruptly vanishes, leaving him a hand-drawn map of their work floor and a nagging sense that something isn’t right. In its “innie” storyline, Severance is a worthy addition to the “Work Sucks, I Know” canon, which includes films like Office Space and Sorry to Bother You and shows like The Office and Party Down.