“Severance” is a phenomenon. Directed by Ben Stiller, the sci-fi psychological thriller is about employees who undergo a procedure to separate their work memories from their personal ones. The show boasts two well-executed seasons, starring award-winning actors such as Adam Scott and Christopher Walken, and garnered rave reviews from both critics and general audiences.
Yet it still managed to fly under the radar. Sure, people are discussing theories and characters in niche forums on Reddit and on certain “sides” of TikTok, but outside of the show’s promotion, nobody is talking about “Severance.”
Why? Because it’s on Apple TV+, which only 11% of United States households use. Of that 11%, a limited percentage of subscribers are interested in the show’s genre, which further cuts down the potential audience. In short, the creators of “Severance” were fighting a losing battle from the get go.
Apple TV+’s homepage is filled with high-budget star-studded films and TV shows—“Blackbird,” starring Taron Egerton, “Presumed Innocent,” starring Jake Gyllenhaal, and so many others come to mind—that most people have never heard of. Since 2019, they have spent over 20 billion dollars creating high-quality content, just for their viewership to remain stagnant. So why does Apple TV+ bother investing in shows no one will watch?
Shows can no longer be cultural phenomenons the way they used to, as every new piece of media released is only being subject to certain segments of the market. We’re never going to have another “M*A*S*H” craze or “Game of Thrones” mania because people don’t rally around release schedules anymore—there’s no central space for great media to thrive.
A show like “Severance” would have been a massive hit in the early 2000s. Instead, it’s stuck in an endless cycle of niche popularity, never quite breaking through to the mainstream. The rise of streaming has killed our need to sit together around a TV for a new episode each week, inadvertently also leading to the downfall of modern television.
Are there benefits? Sure, we have all the shows and movies ever made at our fingertips—for the small price of $17.99 a month. Oh wait, that’s just for Netflix. I kind of want to watch “Dancing with the Stars” and that’s only on Disney+. $15.99 a month. What about HBO Max for “Succession”? $20.99 a month. And the list goes on, and on, and on.
A core tenet of a successful business is balancing supply and demand. We all have to get entertainment somewhere, and only half of all U.S. households have cable TV, so as a consumer, I have a demand for streaming services. Do I have a demand for over 200 unique streaming services, all with slight variations in the content they offer, and all with a steep monthly price? Absolutely not.
That’s where services like Apple TV+ are bound to lose out. No matter how much money you throw into a project, no matter how many big names you get on board, you cannot make customers who are already struggling with a high cost of living pay for something they do not need.
“Severance” has an incredible marketing team; the pop-up they installed at Grand Central Station was instantly viral the way very few campaigns are in this digital era. But great marketing means nothing when the product you’re selling isn’t valuable to customers. Why would the 89% of U.S. households that don’t have Apple TV+ pay an extra $9.99 a month for one great TV show when they could instead find something on the multiple streaming services they already pay for?
We are losing the art of television and long-form visual storytelling. The best shows are spread across too many scarcely used streaming services. Even those involved in production are acknowledging the incredulity: during Nikki Glaser’s Golden Globes opening monologue, she joked that “[Eddie Redmayne was] nominated for Peacock’s “The Day of the Jackal.” It’s about a top-secret elite sniper that no one can find, because he’s on Peacock.”
So why is “Severance” underrated? It’s not. It’s undiscovered, neglected, and hidden in the corners of just another pay-per-month streaming platform, begging for our money in exchange for their designated section of the world’s content. The media landscape has been spread far too thin. As long as we continue to fund the overabundance of streaming platforms available to us, “Severance” and other merit-worthy shows will continue to be deprived of their flowers.
