Apple TV: “Severance” with Adam Scott and Patricia Arquette

The corporate world can be very trying. Managing up. Hiring people. Firing people. Working on projects that seems mindless and meaningless. As if that weren’t enough, then bringing your job home and being consumed by it 24/7.

What if you could turn off your job once you left the office each day? To the extent that you didn’t even remember what you did or whom you worked with?

This is the idea behind Ben Stiller’s stylish and dystopian new series “Severance” (Apple TV). Despite the title, the show has nothing to do with being severed, but rather undergoing an operation whereby a chip is inserted in your brain, “severing” you into two separate selves: your “innie” (or work) self and your “outie” (non-work) self. And never the twain shall meet.

Mark (Adam Scott from “Parks and Recreation), a forty-something corporate droog, is a newly promoted supervisor at Lumon, a biotech firm. He supervises archetypical company man Irving (John Turturro), snarky Dylan (Zach Cherry) and newly severed Helly (Britt Lower), replacing Petey (Yul Vazquez), fired for mysterious reasons.

Their job at Lumon? “Macro Data Refinement,” a mindless task of sorting numbers into digital bins. Every move they make is monitored by Harmony (Patricia Arquette), the evil CEO, and Mister Milchceck (Trammell Tillman), the office supervisor from Hell.

However, good on-the-job performance does have its rewards at Lumon. There are perks like free melon ball snacks and occasional waffle parties.

One day, “outie” Mark receives a secret message from Petey, who seems to know the real story about what happens at Lumon. This sets off a chain of events that will have you binge-watching right up to the thrilling finale, nine episodes later.

The look of “Severance” is gloriously chilling. The corporate headquarters, the old Bell Labs building designed by Eero Saarinen, is stark and will put you in mind of a Silicon Valley HQ (although the show was actually filmed in New Jersey). The long white corridors will remind film buffs of “THX 1138,” George Lucas’ pre-Star Wars masterpiece. And the tinkly piano music makes each episode even more mysterious and creepy.

For those who are still thriving in the corporate world or academia, “Severance” will feel uncomfortably familiar, but strange and different enough to keep you watching. And just an armchair observation: you really don’t need to have a chip inserted in your brain to forget about work completely. There’s also this thing called retirement.

:)