The screen is still black when the question that frames the show Severance is posed: “Who are you?”

A woman with vibrant red hair is lying unconscious on a conference table, and Adam Scott’s disembodied voice interrogates her about her memory. The woman, who we later come to learn is Helly R. (played by Britt Lower), grows increasingly distressed as she realizes she cannot answer any of the questions addressed to her. She does not know her name, she does not know the state in which she was born, she does not know the color of her mother’s eyes. “What did you do to me?” she asks.

Severance asks some of the same questions Augustine poses in his Confessions.