Latest news with #Maniac
Yahoo
08-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Netflix fans blown away after discovering 'mind-bending' mini-series starring Emma Stone
Black Mirror fans can all attest: it is very hard to find a show that scratches a similar itch. The Netflix Charlie Brooker dystopian TV series recently released its newest season, with many fans deciding it is the best season of the show in years. Whether it be Netflix 'gaslighting' viewers by playing different versions of the same scene or the first sequel episode of the show yet – it had fans wowed with its mind-bending concepts and creepy vibe. ADVERTISEMENT Advertisement That is not to say, however, that Netflix has nothing similar. In a recent post on r/NetflixBestOf, one fan asked for 'mindf**king shows like Black Mirror and Love, Death, and Robots' and there was one unanimous answer in the comments: Maniac. The most popular comment suggested this series as the answer – and it's hard to disagree. The mini-series released on Netflix in 2018, starring Hollywood superstars Jonah Hill and Emma Stone. The ten episode series was met with across the board positive reviews, averaging a score of 7.6/10 on IMDb and 85 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. Hill and Stone star as Owen and Annie, a pair of strangers who are drawn to the final stages of a pharmaceutical trial. ADVERTISEMENT Advertisement Each has different reasons for being there however are both promised the same thing: that the magical pill that is being tested will repair any issues with their minds. Jonah Hill stars alongside Emma Stone (Netflix) Collider called the show 'trippy', saying that it was like 'watching someone else's dream', whilst Troy Patterson of The New Yorker even went as far as to call the show a 'wry metaphysical mind-bender'. Jen Chaney of New York Magazine said the show was 'wild, audacious, addictive, and teeters so precariously between reality and fantasy that the audience will immediately question what's real and what isn't'. In essence, if you're after an easy silly watch this maybe isn't the one for you, but if you want something that will twist your brain in half, then this is for you. ADVERTISEMENT Advertisement The series is directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga, an American director who came to prominence for directing True Detective season one, the most highly acclaimed of the show by far. He went on to direct the most recent James Bond film, No Time to Die, which came off the back of his success for Maniac. Cary Fukunaga made his name directing True Detective season one (Bobby Bank via Getty Images) Based on interviews at the time with Fukunaga, however, it seems a miracle the show is acclaimed as it was with the creative saying the show was a 'pain in the a**' to make. He said in an interview with The New York Post: '[Maniac'] was really fun to conceive and a pain in the ass to shoot because we basically had $12 and no time.' ADVERTISEMENT Advertisement He went as far as to reveal that the budget for the shoot was so low that at one point he had to make a prop himself. Speaking about the show, he said: 'For me, the exploration of self — the exploration of the multiple versions of yourself inside you — have been part of my process as a writer and as a director to figure out what it is that's driving me creatively. 'I think this show is the next step in the evolution of my creative process.' His next film, Blood on Snow, is set to feature an all-star cast of Aaron Taylor Johnson, Benedict Cumberbatch, Eva Green, and Ben Mendelsohn.
India.com
08-05-2025
- Entertainment
- India.com
Yo Yo Honey Singh, Nargis Fakhri Completes Shoot For Sensational Song ‘Teri Yaadein'
Mumbai: After belting out chartbusters such as 'Millionaire,' 'Maniac,' and 'Laal Pari', rapper Yo Yo Honey Singh is all set to bring out a new track titled 'Teri Yaadein' featuring actress Nargis Fakhri and said that 'it's a masterpiece.' Honey Singh took to Instagram, where he shared details about the wrap up of the song and also a glimpse of the romantic Arabic number. In the image, the rapper and actress are dressed in Greco-Roman-inspired attire. Honey Singh is sporting a white toga-like outfit with ornate golden embellishments, evoking the look of a Roman noble or general. Meanwhile, Nagis looks gorgeous in a white one-shoulder gown, beautifully embroidered with gold floral detailing. The two are standing closely, with their foreheads gently touching, creating a romantic moment. For the caption, Honey Singh wrote: 'Teri yaadein shoot wrapped guys!! Harharmahadev Much love my brother @grini_f and super amazing @nargisfakhri for doing this for me !! Its a masterpiece @mihirgulati @akankshabhakoo @ @itsrdm COMING THIS MAY #romance #love #music #arabic #poetry #morocco #eygpt.' Honey Singh's latest music offerings include 'Money Money' from the Ajay Devgn-starrer 'Raid 2', which released on May 1 and 'Laal Pari' from the upcoming film 'Housefull 5'. 'Laal Pari' is set against the backdrop of a luxurious cruise, sung by Honey Singh and Simar Kaur. It is also composed by the 'Millionaire' hitmaker with lyrics penned by him and Alfaaz. The song brings back the iconic collaboration of Honey Singh and Akshay Kumar, who have previously given hits such as 'Party All Night,' 'Kudi Chamkeeli,' 'Alcoholic,' and 'Boss'. The choreography is from the ace Remo D'Souza. 'Laal Pari' showcases the sparkling chemistry of the film's massive ensemble cast Akshay Kumar, Abhishek Bachchan, Riteish Deshmukh, Jacqueline Fernandez, Sonam Bajwa, Nargis Fakhri, Sanjay Dutt, Jackie Shroff, Nana Patekar, Chitrangada Singh, Chunky Pandey, Johnny Lever, Shreyas Talpade, Soundarya Sharma, Nikitin Dheer, and Akashdeep Sabir.
Yahoo
08-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Fix Your Severance Withdrawals By Watching These 10 Mind-Bending Shows
Regardless of your opinion on Severance's Season 2 finale (it was incredible!), the end of the season leaves us feeling like the puzzle-solving part of our brain was amputated. Yet our curiosity remains, like a phantom itch we can only scratch with mind-bending television. Luckily for us, Severance is just the latest in a long line of cerebral dramas that'll have you questioning what's real about your life. Dark Matter unravels the chaos of identity across parallel lives, while Mr. Robot drags you down a hacker rabbit hole full of fractured minds and unreliable realities. Maniac is a pharmaceutical fever dream, pairing high-concept sci-fi with emotional disarray. Homecoming whispers paranoia through pristine therapy sessions, and Westworld turns loops of consciousness into a violent symphony of rebellion. If you're ready to tumble down more reality-warping rabbit holes, here are 10 shows that twist the mind, bend the rules, and will satiate your appetite for Severance-style mysteries until the show returns for its third season. Apple TV's Dark Matter may come wrapped in glossier tech and fewer cubicles than Severance, but don't be fooled—both series revel in the quiet horror of split identities and corporate puppeteering. Based on Blake Crouch's novel, the show follows Jason Dessen (Joel Edgerton), a mild-mannered physicist who's abducted into a parallel universe by a more ambitious version of himself, forcing him into a cat-and-mouse game across alternate realities. Where Severance slices the self neatly in two with surgical precision, Dark Matter takes a sledgehammer to the soul, splintering reality with every jump. Jason doesn't just wrestle with duality—he's hunted by the man he could've been. Like Severance's Mark S. (Adam Scott), he's trapped between grief and a synthetic peace, except this time the office is swapped for a multiverse-hopping nightmare. Both shows deliver corporate paranoia with a side of existential dread, and both ask the same brutal question: What part of you is really you when someone else—or something else—is calling the shots? If you think Lumon's sterile stairwells are creepy, wait until you've seen two versions of J.K. Simmons stalking each other across a Berlin split not by a wall, but by dimensions. Counterpart is a brainy, noir-soaked spy thriller with just enough high-concept sci-fi to scratch the same itch as Severance. The premise? A mild-mannered UN pencil-pusher named Howard Silk (Simmons) discovers that his organization has been guarding a portal to a parallel Earth for decades—and his counterpart, a colder, deadlier version of himself, has crossed over to stop a cross-dimensional cold war from going hot. Much like Severance, Counterpart weaponizes identity—posing unnerving questions about who we are when stripped of memory, emotion, or the comfort of a single self. And like Severance's Mark S., Howard is both victim and investigator, forced to untangle not just a mystery, but his own fractured reflection. Throw in double-crosses, bureaucratic overlords, and a few ethically murky lab experiments, and you've got a show that doesn't just echo Severance, it deepens the conversation. Maniac is the acid trip therapy session that breaks the whole brain in half before stitching it back together with neon thread. The Netflix limited series tracks Owen (Jonah Hill), a paranoid schizophrenic heir with a tenuous grip on reality, and Annie (Emma Stone), a pill-addicted loner haunted by the death of her sister, as they're pulled into a clinical trial promising to 'fix' them. What unfolds is a kaleidoscopic plunge into shared delusions—one minute they're noir detectives interrogating lemurs, the next they're elf-eared fantasy warriors—all orchestrated by a malfunctioning AI therapist named GRTA (who, like Lumon's severed employees, has her own breakdown mid-procedure). Like Severance, Maniac explores the allure and danger of erasing pain to become more 'productive.' When Owen's mind fractures between his real self and his fantasy personas, it mirrors Innie Mark's slow discovery that his other life might be a lie. And just like that chilling Lumon break room scene, Maniac features a moment in which the characters are forced to relive their worst memories for the sake of 'treatment.' Both shows sit at the crossroads of sci-fi and psychology, where identity is a glitchy loop and the cure might just be worse than the disease. The sterile cubicles and coded memories of Severance find a chilling parallel in the clinical corridors of Homecoming, Amazon Prime's unnerving dive into corporate memory manipulation. Instead of office workers getting their brains split in two, you've got Julia Roberts playing a caseworker at a facility that helps soldiers 'adjust' back to civilian life. The plot twist is that the place is secretly drugging them to erase their memories so they can be redeployed without all that pesky PTSD. It's super subtle at first, but you start picking up on the weirdness in certain moments—like when Walter (Stephan James), one of the soldiers, realizes his memories don't quite add up anymore. This will unquestionably give you Severance vibes, especially given how the characters slowly start questioning the system around them. And just like Lumon in Severance, the Geist Group hides all this shady stuff behind clean visuals and corporate lingo. Homecoming doesn't have memory-splitting elevators, but the way it messes with identity and free will? Same energy. It begs the question: How much of yourself can you lose before you stop being you? That is very much in that Severance wheelhouse. HBO's Westworld is like Severance's older, more violent predecessor—the one who swapped office cubicles for saloons but still spends way too much time pondering the nature of identity. At its core, Westworld is less about cowboys and more about control: synthetic humans waking up every day with no memory, forced into loops by a corporation that literally scripts their lives. That's basically Innie Helly (Britt Lower) all over again, just with gunfights and philosophical monologues. When Bernard (Jeffrey Wright) finds out he's a host and that his memories were implanted to make him more manageable, it hits the same nerve as Mark S. slowly realizing the extent of Lumon's manipulation. Both shows ask what makes you you—is it your memories, your choices, or the illusion of freedom in a system designed to break you? Swap the maze tattooed under a host's scalp for the Severed Floor's labyrinth of halls, and you're staring at two sides of the same dystopian coin. The surreal British drama series kicks off with a British spy, known only as Number Six (Patrick McGoohan), resigning from his job and immediately getting kidnapped and dumped in a surreal seaside 'village' where everyone's polite but nothing is real. It's kind of like Lumon's Severed Floor with beach views—he can't leave, he doesn't know who's watching him, and every cheerful smile is just another layer of the trap. In one episode he thinks he's finally escaped, only to realize the whole escape was staged, just another manipulation, much like when Mark in Severance thinks he's getting answers but it turns out to be just another corporate trick. Both shows are obsessed with the idea of autonomy. In Severance, they split your mind in two; in The Prisoner, they just scramble it. Max Headroom is like Severance if you cranked the TV static to eleven and sprinkled in some 80s corporate paranoia. The show kicks off with Edison Carter (Matt Frewer), a journalist in a dystopian future where TV networks literally kill to keep ratings up. After he uncovers something shady, he crashes his bike and ends up in a coma—so the network copies his brain and accidentally creates Max (Frewer), this glitched-out digital version of himself who starts causing chaos on-air. It's kind of like if Lumon took Mark's consciousness and uploaded it into a sarcastic TV personality just to see what happens. Actually, Apple might need to greenlight that show. There's a remarkable scene in which Edison watches Max mock the very system that created him, and it feels a lot like Innie Helly trying to protest her own existence on the Severed Floor. Both shows are obsessed with identity being co-opted by corporations—Max is literally a personality split from his original self, used for corporate gain, just like the Innies. The vibe's different—neon-soaked and jittery instead of sterile and quiet—but the core idea remains: when a company takes control of your identity, whatever's left is just a fragment shaped to serve their needs. The Twilight Zone walked so Severance could spiral—it's the OG of taking familiar experiences and shifting them ever-so-slightly to explore the dread and existential horror under the surface of everyday life. It's an anthology series, yeah, but so many episodes tap into the unsettling experience of characters realizing their lives are being scripted by someone else. In the episode 'Five Characters in Search of an Exit,' a group of strangers wakes up in a strange cylinder with no memory, trying to make sense of where they are or who they were—basically the severed floor with circus music. They fight to escape, only to learn they're just toys in a donation bin, a revelation which hits with the same gut-punch as Innie Helly discovering her Outie sees her as a thing, not a person. And then there's 'The Obsolete Man,' in which a librarian is put on trial in a society that's erased books and individuality—the same sterile dread as Severance, the same confrontation with systems erasing people's worth. Severance might wear a sleeker suit, but it's still circling the idea that when someone else controls your story, your identity becomes just another tool shaped to serve their design. Like Severance, Netflix's popular sci-fi anthology series Black Mirror lives in that sweet spot where tech meets trauma, asking what happens when the systems we build to 'optimize' life end up hollowing us out. Take 'White Christmas,' in which people's consciousnesses get trapped in tiny smart home devices—basically Innie Mark, but inside a glorified Alexa, forced to make toast for an eternity. Or 'USS Callister,' in which people are copied into a game and stripped of their autonomy—just like the Innies, they remember pain and crave freedom, but are locked inside a reality someone else designed. Even 'Nosedive' hits that Severance nerve, showing how curated personas can choke out real identity. Both shows are haunted by this question: when your thoughts, your choices, your self are filtered through a corporate or digital lens, what part of you is still truly yours? Severance may focus on fluorescent lights and break room therapy, but Black Mirror already warned us—what we give up for comfort, productivity, or control might be the very thing that makes us human. Innie and Outie Mark S's little VHS kerfuffle at the end of Severance Season 2 is child's play compared to the mutli-season blood feud between hacker supreme Elliott Alderson (Rami Malek) and his alter ego, Mr. Robot. The award-winning USA Network drama follows Elliott and his developmentally stunted and perpetually traumatized gang of digital anarchists, known as F Society, as they try to free humanity from the shackles of evil corporation E Corp (Get it?) while also avenging the deaths of a few of their parents at the greedy hands of its senior executives. Not only does Mr. Robot feature the best performance in Malek's sensational career; it's also one of the only shows from the last decade to match Severance'sunique blend of psychological thriller and sci-fi. While Mr. Robot leans more into cybersecurity while Severance's focus is on sci-fi consciousness splitting, the show does a brilliant (and at times better) job of illustrating the internal struggles between two diametrically opposed halves of the same person. At one point, Mr. Robot shoots and almost kills Elliott, takes over his consciousness without his consent to plan a deadly attack, and uses his childhood trauma to manipulate him. That alone is enough to draw parallels between Mr. Robot and Severance. There's also the mysterious and diabolical corporate overlords of both shows, the computer work leading to real-world consequences, and the, at times, claustrophobic cinematography that really makes these two shows cousins from the same dystopian family tree. For the latest news, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
The Guardian
13-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The play that changed my life: how a pratfall in a student fringe farce made James Graham a playwright
It was 1999. I was doing A-levels in Ashfield in Nottinghamshire, the former mining community I depict in my TV series Sherwood. My comprehensive school was one of the biggest in the country, one of a very small number with a working theatre. I wouldn't be doing what I get to do now without that massive bit of luck. I started doing loads of acting, and the department decided to do the first A-level drama they'd ever done because there were about a dozen of us who wanted to keep going after GCSEs. The course introduced us to commedia dell'arte and we got to do a scene from Accidental Death of an Anarchist. The plot is inspired by a real event that happened in Milan in the 1960s when an anarchist died after he 'fell out of the window' from a high floor of a police station. The wisecracking fraudster Maniac arrives to be interviewed by a low-level inspector. When the inspector is called away, Maniac answers the phone and learns that a judge is coming in to review the case. He sees the opportunity to impersonate that judge by working with them to generate 'a better version' of the lie. So he begins joyfully unravelling their story. I and a bunch of other lads thought it was the most hilarious thing we'd ever read. We all had to do 'work experience' – go to, say, Halfords and stack shelves. We thought, let's see if we can convince our teachers that we're going to do a production of Accidental Death of an Anarchist. Under the pressure of weekly rep. Monday morning you learn your lines, Friday night you're on stage. And it went so well that in 2000, we took it to the Edinburgh festival. I was the constable, a barely speaking role. But I loved it because you got to be part of the whirligig of madness as it begins to spiral out of control. They let me choreograph the beginning of the scene when the constable was on his own waiting for the senior officers to arrive. I was just sweeping up, listening to some music, and it turned into a dance sequence in that classic cliche of a private moment when a character gets taken by the music and starts to dance with his broom. I'm not saying it was stage magic but it always ended with my arse stuck in a dustbin, legs over my head. The audience just roared. I couldn't really understand why but I remember looking out as they applauded, thinking: 'God, this is interesting'. I get to write big political plays these days but I feel very fortunate that my introduction to live theatre was the low-art laughs that unite an audience. I probably take it too far sometimes in my own work, but the shameless search for a gag is never far away. Whenever I'm watching one of my own plays and I know there's not a joke coming for the next three or four minutes I start to fidget. I was quite an introverted, shy kid. But finding a bunch of mates whose enthusiasm and commitment carried me along gave me the confidence to keep going. Along with another lad in the show, Gary, I went on to study drama at Hull and we were both the first in our family to go to university. It was a big deal for us. They called Fo 'the Master' and Anarchist is a Venn diagram of perfection for me when it comes to political anger: a play in search of justice, exposing corruption, but also just the most impeccably crafted escalation of farce and stupidity and silliness and wonder. As told to Lindesay Irvine James Graham's adaptation of Alan Bleasdale's Boys from the Blackstuff is on tour until 5 July
Express Tribune
21-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Express Tribune
Paranoia on a silver platter
It's been three years since Severance first burrowed into our collective consciousness, bringing with it a vision of corporate life so precise, so unsettling, that even the most mundane office corridors began to feel vaguely menacing. With its stark fluorescent lighting, labyrinthine hallways, and the eerie blankness of Lumon Industries' employees, the Apple TV+ series took the drudgery of the nine-to-five and turned it into something existentially harrowing. With a second season airing since January 17 and the psychological thrills intensifying, the wait between episodes may send some dedicated fans to seek similarly mind-bending worlds. Few shows achieve Severance's delicate balance of psychological intrigue, corporate satire, and reality-warping mystery, but fret not for there are a few that come close. Here are five that tap into the same unease, peeling back layers of identity, control, and the ever-permeable boundary between work and self. 'Devs' If Severance left you thinking about the godlike power of corporate overlords, Alex Garland's Devs pushes that idea further - into the world of determinism, quantum mechanics, and a tech giant that operates more like a religious cult than a company. At the centre of it is Lily Chan, a software engineer whose boyfriend mysteriously dies after being recruited into the secretive Devs program at Amaya, a Silicon Valley behemoth run by Nick Offerman in full enigmatic-guru mode. There's a similar precision at play here: sterile, monolithic spaces, an oppressive corporate aesthetic, a creeping sense that nothing - not even free will - is safe from the grasp of the employer. But whereas Severance severs memory, Devs dismantles the very notion of choice. And like Lumon, Amaya is not just a workplace, it's an all-consuming system, one that dictates reality itself. 'Homecoming' For those drawn to Severance's tightly wound corporate conspiracy, Homecoming delivers a similarly slick, paranoia-laced descent into institutional control. The first season, led by Julia Roberts, unfolds in two timelines: one where her character, Heidi Bergman, works at a facility designed to rehabilitate soldiers, and another where she has no memory of having ever worked there at all. The comparisons are easy to make - both shows manipulate memory as a tool of control, stripping their characters of agency while keeping them trapped in eerily precise, almost antiseptic environments. And like Lumon's "severed" floor, the Homecoming facility is its own kind of liminal space, where reality bends just enough to be deeply unsettling. If Severance made you second-guess the fine print in your HR paperwork, Homecoming will have you side-eyeing every last bureaucratic process in your life. 'Maniac' Corporate overreach? Check. Surrealist horror masquerading as self-improvement? Check. A meticulously designed, retro-futuristic aesthetic? Maniac has all the makings of a Severance sibling, though it swaps out workplace drudgery for pharmaceutical experimentation. The premise: two strangers, Annie (Emma Stone) and Owen (Jonah Hill), enroll in a drug trial promising to cure all psychological ailments. What follows is a trippy, kaleidoscopic journey through simulated realities, from a Tolkien-esque fantasy land to a '70s-inflected spy thriller - all overseen by a malfunctioning AI with mommy issues. What makes Maniac a kindred spirit to Severance isn't just its visual ambition but its emotional depth. Both shows use their outlandish premises to explore something painfully human: the desperate need to escape, to rewrite, to compartmentalise. And like Severance's Lumon, Maniac's Neberdine Pharmaceutical is an institution with motives far murkier than advertised. 'Counterpart' If what you loved about Severance was its meticulous, bureaucratic take on identity - the idea that one version of you could exist without knowing the other - then Counterpart should be next on your list. JK Simmons stars as Howard Silk, a mild-mannered UN employee who discovers his agency has been guarding a secret: a parallel dimension, one that diverged from our own decades ago. His double, living on the other side, is everything he isn't; hardened, confident, deeply entrenched in an espionage war between the two worlds. The way Severance interrogates work-life balance, Counterpart interrogates fate. Both shows hinge on the idea that we are not simply who we are, but who we are allowed to be. And both make the spaces that govern those identities, be it Lumon's endless white corridors or Counterpart's shadowy government offices, feel like purgatories of their own making. 'Black Mirror' An obvious choice? Maybe. But there's a reason Black Mirror remains the benchmark for tech-driven existential dread. While not a single cohesive story, many of its episodes tap into Severance's key anxieties: the slippery ethics of corporate power (White Christmas), the commodification of memory (The Entire History of You), the horror of having your identity splintered into something unrecognisable (USS Callister). And like Severance, it's less about the technology itself than the way it erodes the human condition: how innovation, in the wrong hands, becomes a tool for entrapment rather than liberation.
