Before ‘Severance,’ Ben Stiller Made This Critically Acclaimed 89% RT True-Crime Thriller Now Leaving Netflix

Many viewers may agree that Severance has been Ben Stiller’s magnum opus as a director, but it was far from his first impressive series that he was behind. Before writer Dan Erickson arrived on the scene with the eerie and strange anti-capitalist series, Stiller helmed the limited Showtime show, Escape at Dannemora. Inspired by the true events of the upstate New York prison break, the series follows David Sweat (Paul Dano) and Richard “Hacksaw” Matt (Benicio del Toro) in their The Shawshank Redemption-esque bid to find freedom.

Escape at Dannemora pairs humor and drama in the same seamless way that Severance would do years later. This is large in part due to the specific characters portrayed by Dano, Del Toro, and Patricia Arquette in leading roles. Arquette plays the catalyst of the series, Tilly, whose relationship with both men allows their eventual escape. A civilian who works as a supervisor in the prison tailor shop, Tilly quickly falls into a sexual relationship with Sweat. Uninterested in any subtlety whatsoever, the relationship is quickly discovered, and the two are separated. However, Sweat’s friend Hacksaw notes the dynamic and realizes he can use it to his own advantage. After seducing Tilly himself, he plays the people around him like pawns to encourage Tilly to get the tools that will allow him and Sweat to escape the prison. Escape at Dannemora is a fascinating study of loneliness and desperation as the three main characters make decisions against their own self-interest. It isn’t a surprise that Arquette would go on to appear in Stiller’s future work on Apple TV+.

Patricia Arquette’s Characters Are Indistinguishable From Each Other

Paul Dano and Benicio Del Toro’s characters drive the narrative of Escape at Dannemora forward, but the series would have no spark without Patricia Arquette. Almost unrecognizable as the character Tilly, Arquette weaves a tragic story about a woman so lonely that she turned to not just one prisoner but two for comfort. Her marriage to her husband Lyle (Eric Lange) was fading and predictable, making an affair with two people she shouldn’t even more exciting. The character of Tilly is a stark contrast to Harmony Cobel, whom the actor would portray later in Severance.

While Tilly is desperate, naive, and makes all the wrong choices, Harmony is the antithesis of that. The first floor manager for the Microdata Refining department, Harmony, was always sharply dressed and in control of every situation. Having no qualms with how Lumon operates, she was the perfect person to run the severed floor. This, of course, gets out of control, but Harmony never stops being who she is. A soldier for Lumon groomed at a young age, Harmony was a force to be reckoned with.

Fans of Severance shouldn’t miss out on an impressive performance from Arquette as well as a gripping true-to-life tale, punctuated with Ben Stiller’s decisive narrative style. The series may not have been a hit around the watercooler when it first premiered, but there is time to change that. With only eight episodes, fans can catch Escape at Dannemora before Netflix drops it from its platform on October 22.