Severance season 2 review: The dystopian office drama ‘works the same magic but is even more mind-bending’

When it premiered in 2022, Apple TV+’s surreal workplace show was a hit. Now it’s finally back – and from the playful storytelling to the layered performances, there’s a lot to savour.

In the second season of Severance, one character spends hours practising how to put paper clips on properly (apparently there’s a right and a wrong way). Other characters find a room full of goats in their office building, and out of the office someone finds a working phone booth on the street, as if that’s an everyday thing. Yet viewers of season one of the series – among the most bracing and imaginative of recent years – know that its bizarro world is also relatable to anyone who has ever been bored at their job.
With a perfect balance of the real and surreal, the show follows four employees who sort numbers floating on their computer screens at Lumon Industries, and who chose to have a chip put in their brains that cuts their memories in half. The person working inside the office, called the innie, has no knowledge of who they are beyond its walls – and their outside counterpart, or outie, has no memory of the working day. Identity crisis doesn’t begin to describe it. The show’s creator, Dan Erickson, was inspired by wishing that his tedious office temp job while he was a struggling screenwriter could zoom by as if it never happened, and his idea of being able to turn