The week in TV: Severance; Marilyn Manson: Unmasked; Bump; Lucy Worsley Investigates… 1066 – review

Severance (Apple TV+)
Marilyn Manson: Unmasked (Channel 4) | 4oD
Bump (BBC One) | iPlayer
Lucy Worsley Investigates… 1066 (BBC Two) | iPlayer

The return of the Apple TV+ thriller Severance after three years – it was delayed by factors including the Hollywood writers’ strikes – is a reminder that, for me, the first series took a while to “take”. In it, creator Dan Erickson devised a near-future scenario in which people choose to keep their work and home lives separate by having their brain surgically severed, the “innie” self existing only at the sinister Lumon corporation and kept in the dark about their “outie” self in the real world, and vice versa.

At the beginning, Severance was so exasperatingly slow, I almost gave up (this high-concept paint could dry on its own). However, it morphed into a chilly, savage, blackly comic take on modern workplace mores, fusing corporate control freakery and worker infantilisation in Lumon’s long, winding white corridors. Director-producer Ben Stiller got the best out of a potent cast, including Adam Scott and Britt Lower as rebellious innies Mark and Helly. The finale (look away if you haven’t seen it) revealed that Helly’s outie was the Lumon creator’s malign daughter, while Mark, who’d taken severance as a grieving widower, realised that his wife was still alive.

In season two (Stiller returns as main director), the innies, now hailed as severance whistleblowers, are back working at an outwardly penitent Lumon, where glacial executive Harmony (Patricia Arquette) has been sidelined by Tramel Tillman’s cloyingly phoney Mr Milchick.

In the six episodes (of 10) I’ve seen (I must tread gingerly here as there are spoilers for days), the innie/outie-Mark/Helly axis has evolved into a love quadrangle. There’s progression but also pathos in the show’s other love story, between John Turturro’s Irving and Christopher Walken’s Burt. There are guest cameos, too, from the likes of Game of Thrones’ Gwendoline Christie and Arrested Development’s Alia Shawkat. New characters include a child personal assistant played by Sarah Bock.

Along the way there’s nihilism, dualism, absurdism, a neat riff on team-bonding retreats, and, um, nosebleeds, pineapples and goats. So far, so intriguing and wonderfully surrealist and bonkers, but, but… the new series suffers from losing the novelty factor (we’ve seen Lumon’s dazzling white corridors before). It also continues to be gratingly slow. I’m sure we’re all in for more sage, acid commentary on the clash between corporate blankness and the human condition, if we can just hang on for it.

Marilyn Manson, real name: Brian Warner, is the US shock rocker whose ultra-offensive persona – his act hinges on being America’s worst nightmare, especially that of the Christian right – has fallen under scrutiny, with a slew of allegations against him for psychological, emotional and sexual abuse.

As detailed in Karen McGann’s three-part Channel 4 docuseries Marilyn Manson: Unmasked, in 2021 Manson’s ex-girlfriend, the actor Evan Rachel Wood, named him as the abuser she’d described at the 2018 US Congress hearing for the Survivors’ Bill of Rights Act. After which, other women came forward and Manson was dropped by his manager, agent and record company, He denies all allegations, with his lawyer making regular appearances in the series.

As highlighted in Unmasked, it’s an ugly mess that the music industry deserves, given that Manson was feted for his provocative behaviour and quotable outbursts. Even so, there’s material here that was new to me: the singer ranting on stage about “sticky eighth-grade pussies”; also, giving interviews in which he says: “I’m not into rape whatsoever… it’s called snuggle struggle… I prefer to mentally break the woman down to the point where she had no other choice but to submit to me.” There is much more.

Essentially, the series asks: where does Manson’s meticulously crafted persona end and the alleged abuses – in plain sight – begin? Interviewees include fans, ex-bandmates, journalists and former employees (some of whom have ongoing lawsuits against him). Wood (who made the 2022 docuseries Phoenix Rising about her time with Manson) talks about how she was effectively sexually assaulted for the cameras in the making of Manson’s video for his single Heart-Shaped Glasses: “I felt so fucking violated, but I didn’t call it rape for many, many years.”

The number of dropped/amended lawsuits against Manson makes for complicated viewing; he dropped his own defamation case against Wood in November 2024, agreeing to pay her nearly $327,000 (£274,000) costs. Elsewhere, the documentary skips too fast over the scapegoating of Manson for the Columbine high school massacre (his music was blamed for inciting the killers). Accounts from other female accusers are powerful and disturbing, while there are strong general points about the online abuse of women who speak up, and the wider pushback against #MeToo. This is worth a look.

It’s the fifth and final series of Claudia Karvan and Kelsey Munro’s Bump, the Australian comedy that started in 2021. Initially a story around promising schoolgirl Oly (Nathalie Morris) becoming pregnant by her boyfriend Santi (Carlos Sanson Jnr), the show evolved into a study of extended family. As the new series opens, Oly and Santi (now married) have another baby on the way, but darkness swirls as Oly’s mum (played by co-writer Karvan) reels from news that her cancer has returned.

Throughout, Bump is nicely written and performed, packed with bittersweet, wry observations on blended families, lifestyle shocks and everyday existence. Given British viewers’ appetite for Australian shows (Colin from Accounts, After the Party, The Newsreader), there’s still time to give it a much-deserved ratings love bombing.

On BBC Two, the latest episode of Lucy Worsley Investigates… delved into the Battle of Hastings of 1066 and the Bayeux tapestry in an examination of William the Conqueror’s Norman conquest. The series (previous weeks have looked at Jack the Ripper and the gunpowder plot) approaches historic events as potentially solvable – or at least debatable – cold crime cases. Was King Harold killed by an arrow in the eye? Was William a war criminal?

As for the Bayeux tapestry, Worsley’s beady historian’s eye observed that it was technically an embroidery: “This is women’s work, and I suspect that the men who give names to things like this don’t necessarily know what they’re looking at.” Ooh, good point, Ms Worsley, and delivered with such gracious tartness.

Star ratings (out of five)
Severance ★★★★
Marilyn Manson: Unmasked ★★★★
Bump ★★★★
Lucy Worsley Investigates… 1066 ★★★

What else I’m watching

The Crow Girl
(Paramount+)
Bemused by a string of murders, police seek help from a psychologist in a dark, uncompromising Bristol-set thriller starring Katherine Kelly, Eve Myles and Dougray Scott, based on the Erik Axl Sund books.

Love Island All Stars
(ITV2/ITVX)
Previous contestants try again to find true love by the pool and firepit. Existential angst delivered via broken heart emojis.

Crá
(BBC Four)
Stick on the subtitles and check out this gritty, offbeat Irish-language crime drama set in wild and beautiful County Donegal, in which a body is found in a bog.