These 3 shows have the same corporate nightmare energy as Severance

Severance is a sci-fi series about people with a very unique take on work-life balance: when they’re at work, they remember nothing about their life outside the office. And when they’re home, they remember nothing of what they did at work. They voluntarily underwent the “severance” procedure offered by Lumon Industries, which basically means that there are multiple people living inside their heads, and never the twain shall meet.

That leads to all kinds of strange complications that have made Severance one of the best sci-fi shows on Apple TV+, not to mention one of the most popular. Unfortunately, it’ll be a while before we get to see the third season. In the meantime, there are other shows that can give you the same kind of corporate nightmare energy that Severance does.

5 sci‑fi thrillers that unravel one episode at a time

Prepare for a thrilling journey through time and space as these expertly crafted sci-fi series build tension with every episode, leading to jaw-dropping revelations.

Dollhouse

A corporation that strips people of their identities and keeps them in a subterranean space? Sounds familiar.

Dollhouse is a sci-fi series that ran for two seasons on Fox in the late 2000s, and in some ways, it feels like an early draft of Severance. Instead of the shady company Lumon Industries, we have the shady Rossum Corporation. Instead of inventing severance technology, Rossum has invented imprinting, a process by which people have their personalities removed and then overwritten with whatever a client desires.

So the main character, Echo (Eliza Dushku), spends most of her time in the lavish subterranean offices set up to house her and the other “dolls,” basically existing as a blank slate. But periodically she’ll be signed out on “engagements” and imprinted with the skills needed to accomplish them. So she could be turned into an assassin, a thief, a midwife, a dominatrix, or whatever else the high-paying clientele requires, and then returned to her tabula rasa state to await another engagement.

Like the employees on Severance, the characters on Dollhouse volunteer to undergo this procedure (or at least that’s the idea), giving up several years of their lives in exchange for a huge sum of money at the end. But as the show goes on, we learn that some of them have been forced into this situation, and that the Rossum Corporation has very dangerous plans for the imprinting technology. That resembles how the characters on Severance slowly peel back the curtain on Lumon’s corruption.

Dollhouse was made during an earlier era of TV, and sometimes it feels its age; for instance, the first season has a “mission-of-the-week” structure that has mostly fallen out of favor in modern TV. That said, its skepticism about the advance of modern technology feels up-to-the-minute, the twists and turns still work, and the idea of the giant corporation with sinister motives seems evergreen.

Release Date: 2009 – 2010-00-00
Network: FOX
Showrunner: Eliza Dushku

Eliza Dushku

Echo / Caroline Farrell
Olivia Williams

Adelle DeWitt

Enlightened

Welcome to the sad florescent basement where dreams go to die

Enlightened isn’t a sci-fi series, but it does get at the sense a lot of people have today about corporations being unfeeling, soul-crushing entities. The show introduces us to Amy (Laura Dern), who has a mid-level job at a global corporation called Abaddon Industries. She has an incredibly public meltdown after getting demoted (probably by her boss in an attempt to hide an affair) and then gets rehired in the data processing department, where she spends her days in a dimly lit basement where she performs mindless data entry tasks.

If you’ve ever worked in a low-level position in a corporation, Amy’s job will feel hauntingly familiar. There’s a soul-sucking sterility to the data processing department, which of course is located in a basement, just like the dollhouse and the severed floor of Lumon Industries. There are no windows in this sad, joyless little place. In some ways, the prospect of a whole career spent in a department like this is scarier than any grand plan the characters on Dollhouse or Severance are trying to thwart.

But Amy doesn’t let that get her down. After an extended stay at a holistic rehab facility, she’s determined to be an “agent of change,” and starts working to expose corruption at Abaddon Industries. A persistent question throughout the series is whether Amy really is a crusader who cares about exposing Abaddon’s corrupt practices, or if she’s a manipulative narcissist who just wants revenge. Laura Dern, who would go on to win an Oscar for Marriage Story some time after Enlightened ended, is fantastic at walking that line.

Enlightened is funny, weird, and kind of uncomfortable. It’s a good show, although it’s not exactly easy to digest. Creator Mike White would have a lot more mainstream success with the HBO series he created after Englightened, The White Lotus.

Release Date: 2011 – 2013-00-00
Network: HBO
Directors: Miguel Arteta, Jonathan Demme, Nicole Holofcener, James Bobin, Phil Morrison, Todd Haynes

Mr. Robot

Tech companies are always up to something

Mr. Robot revolves around Elliot Alderson (Rami Malek), a socially awkward cybersecurity engineer working at a company owned by E Corp, a giant multinational corporation with hands in technology, banking, media, and more. E Corp is presented as the ultimate distillation of the soulless, corrupt mega-corporation. Elliot spends much of the show trying to take it down alongside members of the anarchist hacktivist group fsociety.

Elliot doesn’t work for E Corp for the whole of the show, but it does loom over everything. E Corp’s omni-presence helps the show establish an oppressive, claustrophobic tone that will resonate with people concerned about the growing power of mega-corporations today.

That said, we shouldn’t take everything we see in Mr. Robot at face value. Part of the conceit of the show is that Elliot has mental issues that make him an unreliable narrator, so his view of E Corp may not always be exactly correct. That’s another element that helps give the series its distinct, off-kilter feel.

Release Date: 2015 – 2019
Network: USA Network
Showrunner: Sam Esmail

Rami Malek

Elliot Alderson
Christian Slater

Mr. Robot
Carly Chaikin

Darlene Alderson
Martin Wallström

Tyrell Wellick

When does Severance return?

Clearly, the idea that working for a huge corporation is like walking through a nightmare isn’t new; lots of TV shows have given their take on it over the years, with Severance simply being the latest. The third season of Severance likely won’t be out until 2027, but these and other shows can help tide you over until then.