Matthew's Journal

This is the last entry on the Hugo Award shortlist for Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form. I'm not sure it's really practicable to compare a 9-episode series with a single feature film, but there we are.

I like the concept behind Severance, but found the tonal shifts a bit jarring; and the series ends on a cliffhanger rather than a satisfactory resolution, all of which left me rather underwhelmed.

The premise is that technology has been developed that lets an employer "sever" the work and not-work memories of employees - at work the "innie" has no knowledge of what happens outside the office, and the "outie" likewise has no memory of what they do at work. Which, of course, leads to rumours about the sort of top-secret things that "severed" employees might be doing that must be kept secret. In fact, office life is weird and mostly pointless (or at least we don't find out what the point of any of it is), and the employees are treated very harshly if they step out of line. So the in-office segments wobble between slightly odd satire of the sort of bullshit that office workers sometimes have to put up and rather more dystopian hints at what's really going on; and outside the office Mark is gradually figuring out that something is amiss.

It just didn't quite work for me (and the staff who turn out to be unsevered seem to have odd motivations, particularly Harmony Cobel), and the ending felt quite inevitable (obviously Dylan wasn't going to keep them "awake" for long enough for Helly to really convince her audience), and the whole "end on a cliffhanger to get people to watch the next series" thing made for quite an unsatisfactory conclusion.