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Admit it: the finale of Apple TV+’s Severance season second knocked you on your ass. It did the same for us, as well; after a season where we wondered if the answers to what was going on with Cold Harbor, Gemma, or the goats were getting further and further away with each new plot strand or spotlight episode, the finale delivered, and how — leaving us very, very eager for the third season to arrive as soon as possible. It also made us excited to revisit some of our favorite earlier mystery box shows — series that ask big questions and make us wait desperately for the answers. For your consideration, dear friends: here are shows that did Severance years before Severance.

This is For Your Consideration, in which we try to come to terms with the inescapable fact that, honestly, there’s too much out there to have time to watch, read, or hear everything — by making some suggestions about things that you might have overlooked but would enjoy, anyway. Think of it as recommendations from a well-meaning friend.

Lost: The show people think of when they think about Mystery Box television

It’s difficult, now, to properly explain what a hold Lost had on popular culture at its height; before the disappointing finale — I won’t spoil it, but yes, I was one of the masses who felt as if the show was leading to something more meaningful and dramatic than what we actually got in the end. Every new question that was raised felt as if it was significance beyond just the plot of the television show, and each new revelation actually prompted watercolor conversation in the workplace the next day. It was genuine appointment television that managed to keep the audience in the palm of its hand from the initial plane crash and polar bear attack through the discovery of the hatch, The Others, Desmond and his constant — which feels very much an influence on Mark and Gemma’s relationship in Severance — and more… right up until that last episode which we can all pretend doesn’t really exist. Of course, Lost failed to answer perhaps the biggest question of all: How come Josh Holloway didn’t become a bigger star?

Available to stream on: Hulu

The Prisoner: The mystery of Number 1 made this an early Mystery Box, long before we knew what that was

The question of how best to follow up a hit TV show is one for the ages, and for 1960s action star Patrick McGoohan — star of mid-60s spy thriller Danger Man (AKA Secret Agent Man outside the UK) — it was one with an entirely unexpected answer. The Prisoner was a spy series with a difference: it wasn’t easy to tell who the good guys were, and who the bad guys were… except that, really, everyone was kind of untrustworthy, and no-one had a name. And perhaps everyone was trapped in a picturesque, surreal Welsh village where nothing was as it seemed, and despite the decor and the language, the spirit of the psychedelic ‘60s was everywhere at once. Purposefully obtuse and paranoid, playful and self-serious at the same time, and unlike any television show before or since, The Prisoner is one of the most unique things you’ll ever have the chance to watch, and somehow it still manages to tell you something new about yourself with every watch.

Available to stream on: Prime Video

FROM: The mystery Mystery Box show that will make you never want to move to a new town ever, ever again

FROM — yes, it’s supposed to be in all-caps — might be an under-the-radar choice, streaming solely on MGM+, but it’s a gripping and fun watch based around Harold Perrineau (from Lost!) who is the sheriff and almost mayor of the Township, a town where people… can’t leave (like The Prisoner! It all connects). Why can’t they leave? That’s not entirely clear, just like it’s also not entirely clear what the monsters in the forest outside the town really are, or just why the town is like this. Mysteries get revealed across the show’s three seasons to date, but the not-knowing — and the show’s glee in teasing answers even as it tees up new mysteries — is what makes this quite the enjoyable secret that it is.

Available to stream on: MGM+