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Later this January, one of the most intriguing science fiction shows of the 21st century will finally return. Nearly three years after its debut, Severance’s second season promises to resolve at least some of the many mysteries posed by this series about a sinister company with the capability to surgically split its employees’ consciousnesses between work and home life (innies and outies, respectively) and the lives of those “severed” workers.
Created by first-time showrunner Dan Erickson, Severance might never have come into existence if it hadn’t landed on the desk of Ben Stiller, who produced the series and directed six of the nine episodes in the first season. But while the emergence of Stiller as a TV director was a surprise to many — since when does Derek Zoolander make prestige television? — it wasn’t his first attempt. Just a few years earlier, he’d directed another critically acclaimed series: Escape at Dannemora.
That show, which premiered in 2018 on Showtime, is streaming now for the first time on Netflix. Not only is it the perfect thing to watch if you’ve already completed your Severance season 1 rewatch, but it may also offer a hint at how Stiller and his cohorts plan to unfurl some of Severance’s many mysteries as we head into season 2.
Escape at Dannemora is a dramatized retelling of a real-life prison break from the maximum security Clinton Correctional Facility in 2015. The show features a sprawling cast but focuses on three characters: Richard Matt (Benicio del Toro), a charming prisoner who paints pictures for the prison guards in return for favors; David Sweat (Paul Dano), another inmate who teams up with Richard to escape; and Joyce “Tilly” Mitchell (Patricia Arquette), a prison employee who becomes romantically involved with both Richard and David. (For the record, the real prison employee denied ever sleeping with either man and called Stiller “a son-of-a-bitch liar” in an interview with The New York Post.)
Image: Showtime
After an opening scene set post-prison break where Tilly is brought in by the police for questioning, the series jumps back in time and painstakingly reveals how the two men managed to break out of a prison often referred to as New York’s Little Siberia (the winters are quite cold in Dannemora). Without spoiling too much, what makes Escape at Dannemora so interesting is the meticulous way its story unfolds. Over the course of several weeks, we watch Richard and David carefully plot their escape while manipulating Tilly into helping them, only to make some incredibly bizarre decisions once they’re finally free.
As the director of all seven episodes (the finale is 99 minutes, but Netflix breaks it into two separate parts), Stiller carefully builds the world of his prison and the surrounding town by devoting time to the people in it, often focusing on the most mundane aspects of their lives. Through the eyes of everyone from long-serving prisoners and new inmates to the prison guards and their families, we’re plunged into this reality just in time to watch Richard and David escape from it.
While Stiller once told IndieWire he never noticed the similarities between Escape at Dannemora and Severance, they aren’t exactly subtle. Both Dannemora and the first season of Severance are, on some level, prison break stories. The innie/outie divide in Severance also feels like an echo of the differences between life in prison, with its unique rules and customs, and the forbidden world beyond its walls. Watching Dannemora, you can see how Stiller honed his skills in bringing unfamiliar spaces to life, whether that’s a maximum security prison or a top-secret underground office. He takes these enclosed settings and miraculously makes them feel like home through precise, muscular camera work and a focus on the characters required to make the best out of a situation they were forced into.
But perhaps the most obvious comparison is the way both shows handle their biggest twists. Severance was always a series built on mystery. That’s baked into Erickson’s script from page one, and Stiller (along with season 1’s other director, Aoife McArdle) fills every frame with a sense of foreboding. From the too-clean offices where the innies work to the perpetually dark and cloudy surrounding town, everything in Severance seems just a little off. Escape at Dannemora doesn’t have as many twists to play with, but it delivers at least one crushing reveal.
Photo: Apple TV Plus
In Dannemora’s penultimate episode, we finally learn what Richard and David did to land in prison in the first place. Stiller shoots these scenes in brutal, bloody detail, making sure we care about each victim before revealing the terrible and brutal crimes committed by Richard and David. After witnessing those horrific actions, it suddenly becomes a lot more difficult to root for their escape. (Something similar happens at the end of Severance’s first season, when the innies temporarily break free from their corporate prison and experience their outies’ lives, leading to several mind-blowing reveals that redefine almost everything that happened up to that point.)
In a sense, that dramatic episode of Dannemora tells us everything we need to know about Severance (or, at least, almost everything — the goats are still a mystery). Because in a show where everyone feels like a blank slate, the biggest twist isn’t whether they’ll ultimately escape from their innie existence or why they’re being severed in the first place; it’s the possibility that the true nature of these characters will tarnish the versions of them we’ve come to know and love. As a storyteller, Stiller is clearly interested in the multifaceted nature of people, and how little we may actually know about each other. When Severance season 2 drops later this January, we’ll know a little bit more — whether we like it or not.
Escape at Dannemora is streaming on Netflix. Severance season 2 premieres Jan. 17.
English (US) ·