10 TV Shows Like Severance You Need To Watch

“Severance” Season 2 can’t come soon enough. Fans of Dan Erickson’s visually and psychologically arresting science fiction drama have had to wait nearly four years to learn the fates of Lumen Industries employees Mark (Adam Scott), Helly (Britt Lower), Dylan (Zack Cherry), and Irving (John Turturro), all of whom had their lives and livelihoods put in jeopardy as a consequence of Season 1’s cliffhanger finale.

For the uninitiated, the Apple TV+ series explores a not-too-distant future in which a corporation can sever or bifurcate a person’s mind so that they essentially have two sets of separate memories — one as the person they are in their personal life, and another as the person they are when they come to work. This essentially creates two separate people who share one body, one of whom spends the entirety of their life working a mind-numbing office job.

But if you’re reading this, it’s likely because you’ve already blown through “Severance” Season 1 and are eagerly looking for another series capable of making you feel the same way. While that’s certainly a tall order to fill given how refreshing and unique “Severance” is, we did manage to find 10 TV shows that will surely help fill the void until Apple TV+ begins releasing new episodes later this month.

There’s certainly no better place to start this list than with Peacock’s “Brave New World,” a polarizing but unmistakably provocative adaptation of Aldous Huxley’s seminal 1932 sci-fi novel. It was developed originally for the SyFy network by David Wiener, fresh from co-executive producing the Amazon Prime Video series “Homecoming” (which we’ll discuss further down). He has since gone on to be the showrunner for the video game adaptation “Halo.” For “Brave New World,” Wiener was blessed with a staggering amount of directing talent, including Ellen Kuras (“The Umbrella Academy”), Adrij Parekh (“Succession”), and, most notably for our purposes, Aoife McArdle. After “Brave New World” was cancelled a single season in, McArdle was tapped to join Ben Stiller in directing the 1st season of “Severance.”

“Brave New World” largely takes place in the futuristic, apparent utopia of New London, where citizens are beholden to a rigid caste system and exhaustively managed — technologically, pharmaceutically, and sociologically — so that they are never unhappy. This perfectly organized society is threatened when an outsider named John (Alden Ehrenreich) is brought among them from the decaying wastes of the so-called Savage Lands. His culturally unorthodox values (such as monogamy, privacy, and emotional honesty) come into direct conflict with New London’s handlers, especially as his mysterious lineage and talent for storytelling unexpectedly see him become one of their most influential figures.

The series shares the dread “Severance” has for a future thriving on efficiency and devoid of interpersonal complexity. Though Peacock did cancel it after one season, it’s still an intriguing watch — especially for those who have read Huxley’s novel, who will surely notice the changes made to update the story for a modern audience.

A master of the corporatocratic dystopian sub-subgenre, Sam Esmail has told plenty of stories that stand shoulder-to-shoulder with “Severance” in terms of tone and theme. Of course, his USA series “Mr. Robot” comes immediately to mind, but we’d argue that “Severance” fans would be even better served by his lesser-known follow-up, “Homecoming.” Directed by Esmail and created by Eli Horowitz and Micah Bloomberg, the Amazon Prime Video series follows the life of social worker Heidi Bergman (Julia Roberts) during and after her time at the mysterious Homecoming Transitional Support Center.

While employed there, Heidi seems to be working with new U.S. veterans who are struggling to re-adjust to life after combat. As we see in many flashbacks, however, her job isn’t exactly what one would expect of a social worker — and, even more disconcerting, this so-called Support Center starts to look more and more like a prison with each new revelation about its inner workings. To make it all seem even shadier, Heidi presently works as a waitress, and suspiciously fails to recall key memories of her time at Homecoming when confronted by the U.S. Department of Defense.

Though “Homecoming” isn’t exactly an anthology series, Heidi’s thrilling storyline is contained to the 1st season, with Roberts completely absent for a Season 2 that’s just not as strong as the first outing. So if Season 1 doesn’t quite satisfy your “Severance” withdrawal entirely, you might be better off looking at other titles on this list before barrelling ahead to the next installment.

Created by Justin Marks, “Counterpart” follows mild-mannered government employee Howard Silk (J.K. Simmons) as his world is turned upside down by the arrival of a doppelganger from another world. Like the employees of Lumen Industries on “Severance,” Howard spends his working life performing mundane yet perplexing tasks he doesn’t know the purpose of for an organization he has little to no understanding of. This changes when Howard is suddenly confronted at work by a man who looks exactly like him — but rather than being his “innie” or “outie,” this other Howard (also played by Simmons and known as “Howard Prime”) is a visitor from a parallel Earth, a being referred to by the Office of Interchange as a Counterpart.

Howard’s work has, in fact, been helping the U.N. communicate with and monitor the other Earth (“Prime World”), despite him being kept in the dark as a seemingly interchangeable low-level employee. Meanwhile, in contrast to the Howard of our Earth (“Alpha World”), Howard Prime is a ruthless and intimidating intelligence officer who has been sent over to neutralize a Prime World assassin who infiltrated Alpha World. (For reasons that slowly become apparent over the course of the series, Prime World resents and is growing more hostile toward Alpha World.) Though there was some hope that “Counterpart” would find a second life on a streamer after it was cancelled by Starz, this tale of two Simmons exists (perhaps appropriately) in only two seasons, each thrilling and rewarding enough to warrant a watch. This is especially true if “Severance” showed you that clandestine organizations and grounded sci-fi are your thing.

Of the shows we selected for this list, “Westworld” might seem like the strangest inclusion — especially if you, like many viewers, stopped watching even before it got the axe from HBO. At first, this very loose re-imagining of Michael Crichton’s novel (and his own 1973 film adaptation) plays out as longtime fans might expect, with a theme park full of wealthy patrons being endangered by technologically advanced robot cowfolk who hold a grudge against humanity. But as the series progresses past the shocking ending of its 1st season, it delves into much larger ideas — some would say too large.

Without giving away too much about a series that relies quite heavily on its potentially exciting (or frustrating) twists and turns, its ambitious exploration of artificial intelligence as a means of creating new life is what sets HBO’s “Westworld” apart from previous iterations of the story. The characters must reckon with how this rapidly growing technology is employed in pre-existing systems already crumbling under the weight of institutional rot and human greed. If you’re willing to check your expectations at the door and surrender to the rollercoaster that is “Westworld,” you’ll find it’s a perfectly amusing park to spend one’s time in while waiting for “Severance” to return.

What do you know — more clones! First released on Apple TV+ in 2024, “Dark Matter” might just be the best sci-fi series in years. Created and executive produced by genre novelist Blake Crouch (who wrote the 2016 novel upon which the series is based), it stars Joel Edgerton as Jason Dessen, a brilliant quantum physicist forced to make a life-altering decision at a pivotal moment in his scientific career.

His dilemma resembles that of Schrödinger’s Cat, with Jason metaphorically and simultaneously stuck in two outcomes until he makes this choice — start a family with his loving wife Daniela (Jennifer Connelly) or dedicate himself to his work. When Jason chooses the latter, this metaphor haunts him into obsession until, through his unparalleled scientific genius, it becomes reality. He constructs a technological cube that, with the assistance of a newly engineered drug, allows those who enter it to create and travel to alternate timelines depending on choices they could have made. Jason uses it to see what his life might look like if he hadn’t given it all to physics, and finds a quainter but happier life where he and Daniela have a son. It seems pleasant to Jason — too bad this timeline already has a Jason in it.

“Dark Matter” is a show best experienced knowing as little as possible, so if two feuding Joel Edgertons strikes your interest, just go ahead and give the pilot a try. And with a 2nd season on the way, you can rest assured its jaw-dropping finale won’t leave you hanging off the cliff for too long.

If you’re in the mood for a shorter journey — and maybe a scarier one as well — Virgin TV’s British sci-fi thriller miniseries “The Feed” is what you’re after. Streaming on Amazon Prime Video in the United States, the series takes place in a near-future society where technological advancements allow people to communicate via neural implants. This collective hyper-social network — through which people can instantaneously alter their own perception of reality, literally share emotions, and experience vivid replays of not just their own memories, but the memories of others — is known in the world as The Feed.

This world-changing invention has, among many other things, made its founding family the Hatfields wealthy, powerful, and largely responsible for the well-being of society. Harry Potter alum David Thewlis plays inventor and patriarch Lawrence opposite “Game of Thrones” star Michelle Fairley as his spouse Meredith. And, as a treat for those of you who have already seen Starz’s “Counterpoint,” Claude Lambert actor Guy Burnet features prominently as their passionate wayward son Tom.

The entire Hatfield family is thrown into crisis when The Feed begins malfunctioning, compelling its users to perform extraordinary and often violently antisocial acts. The series thus charts their attempts to solve this issue as it rapidly begins to unravel everything they think they understand about human nature and connection.

Whatever “Superbad” reunion you imagined for Emma Stone and Jonah Hill, it probably wasn’t “Maniac.” The duo star in the Netflix miniseries, which was developed in 2018 by Patrick Somerville (“The Leftovers;” “Station Eleven”) and Cary Joji Fukunaga (“True Detective”).

Owen Milgrim (Hill) lives with schizophrenia, constantly subjected to intrusive hallucinations and paranoid thoughts that alienate him from society — particularly his wealthy (and morally compromised) family. To confront his condition without their help, he enrolls in an experimental drug trial facilitated by a company that claims to be developing a pill capable of curing all mental illness. There, he meets Annie Landsberg (Stone), a woman whose attempts to recover from past trauma and live a safe, functional life are undermined by symptoms of a personality disorder. Together, they go through harrowing (and imaginatively rendered) tests of the psyche meant to reveal to them who they truly are and send them home unburdened by their pasts — if their minds can survive the trip, that is.

In addition to being aesthetically similar to “Severance,” the show’s brand of sci-fi is peppered with the same markers of corporate dystopia that feel absurd yet eerily authentic at the same time. From crippling financial hardship to the proliferation of ad-supported living, Somerville and Fukunaga provide a world that should be all too familiar to “Severance” fans.

It would be impossible to make a list of this kind without including some mention of Damon Lindelof. Though “Lost” and even his “Watchmen” adaptation contain similar themes, concepts, and, frankly, vibes with “Severance,” neither are quite as fitting as “Mrs. Davis.” Created by Lindelof and Tara Hernandez, it stars “The Hunt” actor Betty Gilpin as Sister Simone, a nun who is forced into conflict with a night-omniscient and omnipresent artificial intelligence named Mrs. Davis.

Mrs. Davis doesn’t appear to share much in common with Skynet, however. In fact, her guidance — seemingly followed willingly by almost everyone on Earth, from low-level criminals to world leaders — has allowed humanity to prosper in new ways while avoiding the pitfalls that have historically driven them closer to extinction. (Yes, the parallels to organized religion are precisely as unsubtle as the rest of the ambitious and exhausting series is.) All Mrs. Davis wants now is for Simone to talk to her, and she goes to extraordinary lengths to make this happen — still, Simone goes even further to avoid her, blaming Mrs. Davis for a tragedy in her past.

In most regards, “Mrs. Davis” is arguably the weirdest show recommended on this list — certainly weirder than “Severance.” But while they differ in tone and direction, they reconverge on their shared ideas on the nature of technological advancement and its potential effect on humankind.

Chances are, you don’t need us to make you aware of “Black Mirror.” The British anthology series from Charlie Brooker has been a consistently viral sensation since its 1st season landed on Netflix in 2011. Since then, they have produced 28 unique tales of digital dystopias and technological terrors, including an interactive film and a truly disturbing holiday special.

As longtime “Black Mirror” fans can attest, the series has always been a bit all over the place, and has only become more unpredictable in terms of quality, style, tone, and even genre as the seasons go on. With this in mind, there are a few specific episodes that evoke the same or similar experience to watching “Severance” that we’d be happy to draw your attention to: Season 1, Episode 3 — “The Entire History of You,” (written by “Succession” scribe Jesse Armstrong, it features a device that replays memories in your head); the 2014 Christmas Special “White Christmas” (in which Jon Hamm and Rafe Spall go on a twisting journey through technological shame); Season 3, Episode 1 — “Nosedive” (which takes place in a society organized around personal app ratings); Season 4, Episode 1 — “USS Callister” (where Jesse Plemons gets a little too into “Star Trek”); and Season 6, Episode 1 — “Joan is Awful” (starring Annie Murphy as, well, you).

FX and Hulu’s “Devs” is nearly impossible to explain without ruining the onslaught of revelations that make it one of the most effective sci-fi thrillers of the past decade. If this miniseries already sounds intriguing — with the added knowledge that it was created, written, and directed by A24 favorite Alex Garland and stars Nick Offerman in arguably the greatest role of his career — we recommend heading over to a streamer now to avoid even the tiniest of spoilers. If you still need convincing, buckle up.

“Devs” is named after a fictional advanced technology program run out of Silicon Valley by an enigmatic and emotionally tortured CEO named Forest (Offerman). The division’s goal is to develop a quantum computer so powerful it can accurately predict the future, as well as determine the sequence of events that made the present moment unavoidable. When newcomer Lily Chan (Sonoya Mizuno) joins the engineering team, she quickly begins to question the nature of their work, Forest’s competency and sanity, as well as his true aspirations for such technology.

If you’ve been struggling to choose a show from this list, “Devs” is likely your best bet. It has the high-concept corporate conspiracy of “Severance,” the techno-religious overtones of “Westworld” and “Mrs. Davis,” the obsessive exploration of choice and reality of “Dark Matter,” and so much more to offer that we really can’t get into here without spoiling the fun. Just give it a chance — and if you hate it, take comfort in the possibility that another universe exists where you didn’t watch it at all.