Apple TV+’s surreal workplace show was a hit when it premiered in 2022. Now it’s finally that time again – and from the playful storytelling to the multi-layered performances, there’s a lot to enjoy.

In the second season of Severance, a character spends hours practicing how to properly attach paper clips (apparently there’s a right way and a wrong way). Other characters find a room full of goats in their office building, and outside the office someone finds a working phone booth on the street, as if it were an everyday occurrence. But viewers of the series’ first season – one of the most exciting and imaginative in recent years – know that the bizarre world is relatable to anyone who has ever been bored at work.

With a perfect balance between the real and the surreal, the show follows four employees who sort numbers floating on their computer screens at Lumon Industries and who have decided to have a chip inserted into their brains that halves their memories. The person who works inside the office, called the Innie, has no idea who they are outside the office walls – and their outside counterpart, the Outie, has no memory of the workday. Identity crisis doesn’t begin to describe it. The show’s creator, Dan Erickson, was inspired wishing that his tedious office temp job when he was struggling as a screenwriter could fly by as if it never happened, and his idea of ​​being able to turn off the brain is particularly resonant in our age of information overload.

This variation on the well-known office show premise is a great hook. But the true alchemy of the series, and the secret to its success and recognition, lies in how well it builds our emotional connection with the characters in Lumon’s macrodata refinement department, who now realize they’ve made a terrible mistake. The cast makes them so believable that you can easily empathize with the grieving widower Mark (Adam Scott), the fussy and love-struck Irving (John Turturro), the rebellious Helly (Britt Lower) and Dylan (Zach Cherry), an office drone seemed unhappy until he wasn’t. Some shows radically mix things up between seasons, but this is a seamless sequel that delivers the same magic with even more jaw-dropping twists.

The plot begins five months after the cliffhanging events we last saw, with Dylan staying behind at Lumon Industries and laboriously flipping a switch that allowed the other three to briefly access their work memories from outside. Mark discovered that his wife Gemma might actually still be alive and that she was someone he met at work without realizing it. Irv is an artist who for some reason has hidden documents about Lumon employees in his apartment. Most startling is Helly, Helena Eagan, the heiress to the Lumon fortune, who underwent a “settlement,” as the process is called, to publicly demonstrate her trust.

You return to the office with all this knowledge, but the storytelling is now trickier and more playful. From the beginning of the series, we saw both interior and exterior worlds and therefore knew more about the characters than they knew about themselves. But this season, we’re less sure about some characters’ motives than we were — or thought. What is their game, what are they hiding and are they as united as they seem? Each is, at least for a while, an unreliable narrator who deftly adds suspense.

Some things are the same. Scott is still heartbreaking as outie Mark, so heartbroken over the loss of his wife that he chooses to be separated to avoid the pain of that memory for part of the day. And as the disillusioned Innie Mark, his sarcastic retorts to his superiors ring with razor-sharp clarity.

Lower now has an even more complex role and plays it with perfect subtlety as Helly/Helena with her extremely complicated double life. Turturro has never had a better role or a stronger performance, suggesting the fire underlying the seemingly dull Irv. He continues to love Burt, the former Lumon employee played by Christopher Walken, who delivers delightful, pure Walken lines. No one else could make a dinner invitation that begins with “We have a ham” sound the same. Tramell Tillman returns as Lumon boss Mr. Milchick, his smile scarier than ever. Ben Stiller directs with visual flair, contrasting the dark, snowy outside world with the claustrophobic, blindingly white corridor labyrinth in Lumon.

Most of the differences cannot be revealed yet. Among other things, we learn more about Dylan’s family and discover that it is possible to find a secret place to have sex in the Lumon offices. Guest actors come and go, including Gwendoline Christie, Merritt Wever, Bob Balaban and Alia Shawkat.

Apple TV+ only sent critics six out of ten episodes, so I couldn’t say more about the final part of the season even if I wanted to. But halfway through, the story has taken a turn that messes with the minds of the staff, and while that raises the stakes, the plot isn’t as compelling as it should be, at least not yet. Too much science fiction threatens to jeopardize the perfect balance of the series.

And all along, too little attention has been paid to the cult-like aspect of Lumon, where everyone treats its 19th-century founder, Kier Eagan, as a prophet and whose company manual is considered a religious, Bible-like document. The obsequious way the employees always call Milchick “Mr. Milchick,” as if they were schoolchildren addressing a teacher, is just the beginning. Whatever happens in the final episodes, there’s a lot to enjoy, including the utter disdain in Innie Mark’s voice when he says “Praise Kier.”

The first two episodes of Severance Season 2 will debut on Apple TV+ on January 17, with new episodes releasing weekly.