The problem with a lot of horror television series is that familiarity isn’t scary, so telling the story of the same characters every week often has the frustrating effect of making those characters feel safe and secure. It’s too soon to say if the new Apple TV+ series Servant will avoid these pitfalls over time, but the first three episodes are extremely encouraging, and play less like episodic installments that flow into each other, and more like page-turning chapters in an riveting horror novel.
Created and written by Tony Basgallop (Hollywood Babylon), the series stars Lauren Ambrose (The X-Files) and Toby Kebbell (Destroyer) as Dorothy and Sean Turner, an upper crust working couple in Philadelphia who have just hired a nanny for their infant son, Jericho. Quiet and seemingly very religious, which freaks the atheistic Sean out, Leanne (Nell Tiger Free, Game of Thrones) moves into their house, while Dorothy desperately seeks her approval.
In fact, Dorothy seems desperate every second of the pilot episode. She’s so full of nervous energy it’s hard to tell if she’s giving a campy performance, or if the show is dramatically miscalculating how plausible her disposition is. It’s only when the first shoe drops that her behavior finally makes sense.
The premise of Servant is revealed halfway through the first episode and is common knowledge online, so we’re going to discuss the first big plot point here. We will, however, be very coy about everything else that happens, because Servant is not a one-twist show, and watching how these events play out is one of the great joys of the initial episodes.
Jericho, the Turner’s baby, is dead. He died a while ago, and Dorothy’s nebulously qualified therapist has suggested using a “Reborn Doll” made in Jericho’s image to help her deal with the psychologically debilitating grief. Leanne will be expected to care for a fake baby, and Sean is simply along for the ride, hoping his wife eventually gets better, and refusing to take the charade seriously whenever Dorothy isn’t around.
There’s just one more problem (for now): Leanne seems to think the baby is real too.
It sounds a bit like the set-up of William Brent Bell’s excellent horror-mystery The Boy, but Servant swiftly goes in very different directions. It’s less about the baby and more about the unbearable tension of living in a house where delusions are allowed to thrive. Kebbell plays a fascinating character, who may be the only sane one in the household or – just possibly – might be the only one without the capacity for imagination or empathy. His inability to take a leap of faith could be the only thing that saves the Turners or, conversely, the very thing that damns them.
M. Night Shyamalan is one of the executive producers on the series and he directs the pilot, which establishes the filmmaker’s keen eye for uncomfortable composition and uncanny ability to parcel out misleading information. As a filmmaker, Shyamalan is excellent at setting up tension and building mystique but he isn’t always able to effectively capitalize on all that build-up.
So it’s encouraging that Shyamalan is working with a new writer, whose style is very Shyamalan-esque, as well as other directors who can keep that macabre energy flowing. Daniel Sackheim (True Detective) confidently takes over for the second and third episodes, which each have their share of weird revelations and mounting dread, and future installments are directed by Lisa Brühlmann (Killing Eve) and John Dahl (Ray Donovan). So the series seems to be in strong hands.
“Seems,” of course, is the operative word. As the first three episodes of Servant progress and we realize just how many layers have already been revealed, and how many more have yet to come, one can’t help but wonder if this series can keep up this storytelling pace without losing all connection to reality. If it sinks too deeply into the quagmire of weirdness it could very well stop being scary and become, instead, merely eccentric. Servant is veering close to campiness already. It may eventually decide to go all in on the craziness and if it does, it could be one of the most entertainingly weird horror shows in recent memory.
Then again, if it wants to stay scary, it could very well pull that trick off. There’s a psychological phantasmagoria at work here. Servant presents an ominous world in which men gaslight women “for their own good” and then have that whole process turned back around on them. To what end, we’ll hopefully find out. But what a beginning we have so far, and what a thrill it is to watch each morbid chapter unfold.
For now.
