Severance is not only intriguing - it is also deeply frightening

Many of us have had a job we hate.

- Jennifer Cartwright on Severance

We work in places we'd rather not be and complete tasks that are boring, difficult and the cause of our ever-evolving frown lines. But if you could separate your work self from your home self so that there is a version of you who never has to work, or at least never remember working, would you do it? This is the question that Apple TV+'s Severance asks.

Employees at Lumon Industries have undergone the 'severance' procedure. Their brains are partitioned into two forms of consciousness - the 'outie' who only remembers their life outside of work and the 'innie' who only remembers their life within it.

For the 'outie' to live a life never bothered by deadlines, mundane tasks and schmoozing with colleagues, the 'innie' must live a life consumed by this.

Severance's idea of a life where you can earn money with no memory of the labour taken to do this initially seems a utopian dream. But when you consider the life of the 'innie' who works to earn but never reaps any reward, the concept soon transforms into a dystopian nightmare.