The $200,000,000 TV show that will be hard to beat in 2025

Three years is far too long to wait for the follow-up of a major TV show but at least the long-awaited arrival of Severance season 2 gave me time to recover.

In the the first season, we meet our protagonist Mark (Adam Scott), a man so haunted by the death of his wife in a car crash that he barely has blood pulsing through his veins. He is practically a ghost.

To evade his painful existence, he decides to work for Lumon, a shady company that has pioneered ‘severance’ – an operation that creates a total separation between employees’ real-life selves (outies) and their work selves (innies). It means innie Mark has no idea his outie was married, let alone feeling grief, while outie Mark has no clue what his innie does all day.

Innie Mark befriends his co-workers in the microdata refinement department, Helly (Britt Lower), Dylan (Zach Cherry) and Irving (John Turturro). They spend all day at computers assigning floating numbers into files but don’t know why. A searing take, perhaps, on today’s capitalist society’s unquestioned requirement for productivity for productivity’s sake.

But arguably the central conflict in season one is between Lumon’s employees’ selves: their outies seeking complete oblivion, while their innies desire the full weight of life. This culminates in the innies staging a rebellion – and successfully waking up in their outies. The series ends with Helly discovering she is the daughter of Lumon’s CEO and Mark learning his wife is alive inside Lumon’s HQ.

Season 2 picks up in the aftermath of the rebellion and follows the innies and outies as they try to reconcile their two selves. Severance is often billed as an office drama, one that explores work/life balance to its extreme, and it is, certainly; but above all the show is about contradictions and competing desires within ourselves.

Severance season 2 will be the best TV show of 2025 (Picture: Apple TV Plus/Jon Pack)

It follows the ‘severed’ employees of Lumon learn more about their real selves (Picture: Apple TV Plus/Jon Pack)

I felt unsettled after I watched the entire 10 episodes in three sittings – but in the best way possible. I’ve never had a TV show make me question the choices I make and why: whether I’ve suppressed what I actually want to appear a certain way on the outside and how much I change my personality for work.

Rather than the innies becoming a faction or different side of their outies, they start to gain even more autonomy armed with their new knowledge, becoming, in many ways, their own people.

While it’s hard not to be completely suckered into Helly and Mark’s blossoming relationship, beautifully played by Lower and Scott, some of season 2’s most underrated and touching scenes centre around Cherry’s Dylan. They may not be the most propulsive plot drivers, but they embody, heartbreakingly, the insurmountable wedge being driven between the innies and outies.

This is why Severance will be the best TV show of 2025: the thrilling juxtaposition of the most accurate depiction of human emotions onscreen played out in a bone-chillingly sterile office environment devoid of any life. Season 2 reportedly cost $200million (£159.9m) to make, but boy every penny is well spent.

The performances in Severance are all exceptional (Picture: Apple TV Plus/Jon Pack)

Ben Stiller’s direction in Severance season 2 is note-perfect. He draws impeccable performances from his leads, who straddle the precarious line between being stunted and emotionally vibrant. The sets are also a sight to behold: I practically got frostbite from the glacial interiors and expansive snow-laden vistas of life outside Lumon HQ.

It’s impossible to summarise Severance season 2 without giving huge spoilers, so I won’t. It’s also out of fear I too would be cast in some hellish office purgatory for committing a work sin. But I promise you: it’s worth every second of your time. It might even be the TV show of the century.

In some ways, I hope we don’t have another three-year wait for the next instalment of Severance but, also, I needed a long sitdown after season 2. It’s rare a TV show is so thought-provoking it gives you whiplash.

Severance season 2 premieres on Apple TV Plus on Friday, January 17.

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