Noted devotee of psychological terror and surprise twist endings, filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan goes behind the creative curtain of TV once more—his first time since 2016’s “Wayward Pines” finale— with Apple TV+‘s new series “Servant.” Working this time with creator/writer Tony Basgallop (“What Remains,” “24: Live Another Day“), a BBC network veteran, “Servant,” centers on a wounding trauma that’s built upon a ridiculous conceit. Tremendously silly at first, as the show progresses, “Servant” grows strangely absorbing and watchable, sinking its claws in you, even, but then suddenly holds no razor grip and ultimately lands in an awfully familiar place.
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In an extremely upsetting premise, a Philadelphian couple, Dorothy and Sean Turner (played with widely different approaches by Lauren Ambrose and Toby Kebbell), suffers unspeakable tragedy when their newborn son Jericho dies unexpectedly. Unable to process the shock of her son’s death, the devastation sends Dorothy into a mental tailspin and she begins to use a life-like doll as a coping mechanism to preserve a deluded sanity. This survival tool is bound to fail at some point, and Sean knows it. But just as all seems lost, a nanny the couple family planned to hire before the baby’s death, Leanne (Nell Tiger Free from Nicolas Winding Refn’s “Too Old to Die Young”), waltzes in out of nowhere one day, replacing the placebo doll with a real-life baby. Spooky stuff ensues.
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“Servant” is a sprint on a cracking ice pond when it comes to managing its story, one that needs to be tasteful and introspective and also make your skin crawl. The homely Leanne is written to be a little off. She’s old-school religious, think borderline Mennonite, doesn’t say a ton and knits together a crucifix to put over the new baby’s crib. At any given moment, one could believe Leanne was heaven sent to give the Turner’s the baby they lost or that she’s got something else very nefarious up her sleeve. It’s a delightful moral complexity that only sinks its teeth into you the more Basgallop advances the story. Free is terrific in keeping Leanne ambiguous, but also from becoming too much of a one-note character. She lives up to that patented Shyamalan character that, at any given moment, can make you nervous. It’s a cobweb of mind games for the Turner’s—or at least the extremely taken aback and skeptical Sean (Dorothy, still in shock, transitions smoothly from fake baby doll to really baby)—and for the audience, the slow unraveling of who she is and her intentions is the best part of the show.
When Dorothy’s brother Julian (a wily Rupert Grint, continuing to find his place in a post-“Harry Potter” world) finds out what’s going on, the wheels really begin to turn into exploring who Leanne is, what her past is, and how on Earth a baby is now in their house. The premise is caked in melancholic grief—also one of the show’s high points—and scary implications, but it’s also a bit ludicrous for how long appearances are kept up and how long Sean and Julian tolerate the charade of Baby Jericho suddenly “safe and sounds” back in their home like nothing happened (the conceit is they don’t want to shock Dorothy further in her fragile mental state). While they’re cynical and hire a detective to investigate her, they also go about their business as normal with everything that’s happening (trust us, things do get weirder and darker the more we learn about what’s what). At the same time, Basgallop’s story addresses the comfort in healing isn’t always rooted in logic. Sean is well-aware that this is not his son and it needs to ultimately go, but the longer it’s in the house, the longer he becomes emotionally attached to it too.
When it’s at its best, “Servant” and the team of writers and directors (Nimrod Antal, in particular, directing some well-shot episodes) that shape it, spark engaging conversations on the ways we cope and the desperate lengths we go through to find peace. Ambrose and Kebbell carry a lot of that weight early on (Grint begins his own path in this later in the run) trying to convince the viewer emotionally, distracting them from the suspension-of-disbelief inherent in the story’s set-up.
Ambrose takes Dorothy, a bubbly personality and television reporter, and whittles down the inner fears and insecurities she has around her delicate and fabricated reality. Kebbell is careful with allowing Sean, a prickly pear of a chef, a healthy evolution from angered skeptic to a man beginning to question his beliefs and look past the obvious explanation for what’s happening. As wobbly as the show is and how their different styles are at first, when it all gels, the show serves the performances well. Keep an eye out for “House of Cards” alum Boris McGiver, too, in a gleefully twisted supporting turn. You’ll never hear squeaking boots the same way again.
For all the strong character work, though, every episode shifts and slides around in a fog, and you’re never really sure exactly where the story is going or what themes are red herrings and what is meant to be real. Ruminations on spirituality, religious devotion, piousness, and one’s worthiness to receive grace also seep in the more we explore Leanne’s past and motives, but it never connects to the whole in a meaningful way. A last-minute switcheroo with the story tries to hammer these ideas home, but by then the audience has grown weary and deeply frustrated with the show’s unsatisfying, unconvincing final detour. It’s not a late-game plot twist that calls in the failure horn from “The Price is Right,” like some Shyamalan endings, but it’s unpersuasive, flat, and anticlimactic. A second season might clear some of it up, but will anyone care enough?
Shyamalan’s always possessed an acute sense for intimate horror, of exploring those fragile little details of our psyche and personalities that react to the uneasy and unexplained that can occasionally creep into our lives. It’s easy to see why that took to Basgallop’s story and then tried to build a Hitchock-ian visual world around it, muted, dark, restrained and often effective. But it’s ultimately not enough and the story and the whole just does not stick the landing at all.
Regardless, some of “Servant” is still worth it. You can focus on the acting, or genre ace Michael Gioulakis‘ excellent, atmospheric cinematography or that the show is, at times, just so riveting in its shrouded nature. Yet, in the end, “Servant” makes the critical mistakes of being both too ambiguous and not elusive enough. [C+]
