I finally got around to starting Severance and god damn, it’s good. It’s a 9-part series (on Apple TV) about a corporate dystopia where employees of a company called Lumon (not to be confused with Lululemon) can choose to have their consciousness surgically split into work life and home life. It’s the ultimate alienation from work drama.
High concept premises like this often fail to deliver but so far, I love it. It’s mysterious, creepy AF and darkly funny. The offices of Lumon are terrifying in their hokey, 1970’s sterility. In an early scene, an employee is walked around a series of interminable, anonymous hallways at HQ. This goes on for about 30 seconds too long - it’s odd and disconcerting and somehow deeply amusing at the same time.
Chillingly claustrophobic, so far I’ve only seen glimpses of the shady, sinister machinations of the company itself and what the hell they’re up to. Adam Scott is brilliant as the everyman who’s willingly submitted himself to the procedure to escape his grief for the wife he lost and I love Britt Lower as Helly, the newly severed employee who’s still in the WTAF stage of the process, desperately searching for ways to get the hell out. In fact the whole cast is seriously great. Patricia Arquette, John Turturro, Christopher Walken - c’mon.
I’m three episodes in and can’t wait to see where it goes. Are you watching? What do you think?
A friend directed me to an American podcast called The Mystery Show with the caveat that the host has “a baby voice”. As we all know, I’ve developed a very high threshold for challenging podcast host vocals so I was not deterred.
This podcast has shades of another US series, Reply All in its gentle exploration of modern life, cultural mysteries and the internet. The most famous episode of Reply All is The Case of the Missing Hit which is ideal for a long car journey.
The Mystery Show is a little thinner than Reply All but if you’re in the market for 45 minutes of disarming distraction, you’ll like it. The host, Starlee Kine is a former This American Life producer and you can tell. The show has a similarly smug tone but Kine is much more endearing and like a real human than Ira Glass.
They only made 6 episodes and I’d say 3 are worth your while. Kine investigates the kind of mysteries that you can’t simply solve by Googling. In one, a friend becomes obsessed with finding out Jake Gyllenhaal’s height (surprisingly not available in the public domain before this podcast aired). Then there’s the woman who spots the unsuccessful book she wrote under Britney Spears’ arm in a paparazzi pic and wants to know how she got it. In another, Kine and a friend pull up at traffic lights next to a woman driving a car with the number plate ‘I ♡ 911’. The car drives off and they need to know the story.
In the process of solving these mysteries, Kine meets some interesting characters and isn’t afraid to go off on extended tangents, asking them about their own lives and stories. It’s good fun.
Speaking of podcasts for long journeys, I’m going to put together a sort of mix tape of the best standalone podcast episodes. Please send me yours for the list! Lots of people have been DMing me suggestions for this newsletter which I love but if you share in the comments below, everyone gets to see them so please don’t be shy!
p.s The New York Times writer and author, Taffy Brodesser-Akner has been Tweeting about the TV adaptation of her very good 2019 novel, Fleishman Is In Trouble. Jesse Eisenberg is playing Toby and Claire Danes is Rachel which seems like excellent casting to me. Taffy is probably the best profile writer in the business and I intermittently re-visit her unbelievably brilliant interview with Gwyneth Paltrow from 2018 just to gawp in awe. Anyway, I’m excited for the show and for some new writing from TBA.
p.p.s I raved about Bess Kalb’s memoir, Nobody Will Tell You This But Me, a few weeks ago. Now I’m recommending you sign up to her newsletter, The Grudge Report.
See you next time!
Hannah
Creepy AF and darkly funny
Ooh some podcast eps I’ve loved are… the Alex and Gregor episodes of Heavyweight; the first Claudia Winkleman ep of Off Menu (I think she has multiple); the Power Rangers ep of How I Built This (yes really!); Dolly’s Love Stories with Emma Freud; a fascinating This American Life called Three Miles about a public/private school swap. Quite an eclectic mix reading this back!
Brilliant list, thank you!