Severance is everything you could want from TV

Gawker

"Part workplace comedy, part philosophical mind-bender, part Lost-style mystery box, both emotional drama and tense conspiracy thriller. Created by Dan Erickson and largely directed by Ben Stiller, Severance is the epitome of what you could want — and should want — from television," says Corey Atad. "And I would emphasize television here. What might have been a solid if familiarly constructed premise for a feature film — think Brazil and The Trial and Office Space and what have you — is instead elevated by its chosen medium into a constantly evolving and expanding world with cliffhangers to spare and a pull to dig deeper and deeper. Episode by episode, Severance only gets better, stronger, more clear-eyed, more surprising, even as its mysteries compound."

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• Patricia Arquette on whether she was going for laughs: "We fooled around with that. Everyone was like, 'How far do we go or not?' You do multiple takes," she says. "Then, in editing, they decide which direction they want to go. What I was doing became clearer and clearer throughout. (Creator Dan Erickson) created a really rich backstory, so there was a lot to anchor you. It wasn’t like, 'Let’s just wing it right now.' But there’s always, hopefully, a little bit of freedom to improvise within the character. I like that it’s so contained. It is very different from a lot of the characters I’ve played. She plays things much closer to the vest. That’s why a lot of these other characters, whether it’s Helly or Mark, don’t know exactly how she feels or what she’s going to do."
• Adam Scott enjoys the Lost comparisons: “The discipline it took them to wait until that moment to get that camera to go down that hole and looking up at the actors…it was incredible,” Scott says of Lost. “I know it’s in some ways cruel and unusual, but I also think it’s just so much fun to be watching something and have that feeling. And when we were doing it, we were thinking the same thing, just like, Oh Jesus, if people are still with us, this is going to be a lot of fun.”