**8.5/10. A weird, dark and claustrophobic M. Night Shyamalan show *MINOR SPOILERS***

Servant is a psychological horror AppleTV+ series written and created by Tony Basgallop, who is also Executive Producer, with M. Night Shyamalan, whose hand in this is apparent.

Servant is the weird and often claustrophobic story of married couple Dorothy (Lauren Ambrose), a TV reporter, and Sean Turner (Toby Kebbell), a development chef, living in Philadelphia. They hire the seemingly meek and religious 18-year-old Leanne Grayson as nanny for their baby son, Jericho.

In a shocking moment, Sean drags Jericho by his leg, bouncing his head on the side of the crib like a rag doll. It appears Jericho is a (very lifelike) reborn doll, who Dorothy treats as if he’s her real baby. The doll brought Dorothy out of her catatonic and depressed state after Jericho tragically died, six weeks prior to hiring Leanne.

Sean deals with his grief differently and is often bemused by Dorothy and then Leanne’s treatment of the doll as real. He becomes suspicious of Leanne and her intentions, and the strange events that occur after her arrival, including Jericho becoming a real baby after a nap…

Things get weirder as Sean and Dorothy’s brother, Julian, investigate Leanne and are disturbed that Leanne and Dorothy act like Jericho has been real all along. Sean begins to experience physical ailments, like splinters in his skin and loses his sense of taste – which is very important to him, being a chef.

Servant is dark, mysterious and gripping, with some shocking and utterly bonkers moments. It takes place mainly in the Turner’s house, focussing on a few main characters, which adds to the tension. The slowly appearing flashbacks are well placed, providing some back story, and also raising more questions in some effective storytelling.

Toby Kebbell is great, he does bewildered / angry / humorous very well and in a nuanced way, and after becoming obsessed with Master Chef during lockdown, I was intrigued by his job as development chef and his interesting recipe creations - apart from the one with the profiteroles…

Lauren Ambrose is excellent as Dorothy, showing real grief and slowly manic behaviour. She keeps you guessing throughout as to what’s really going on in her psyche, her seemingly normal smile belies something else under the surface, that you can see in her eyes. Similarly Nell Tiger Free gives a strong performance as Leanne, she’s a very different character to Dorothy but keeps a lot under the surface as well and her true intentions are not revealed, as yet…

It felt a bit odd to see Rupert Grint, as I’ve never seen him in anything other than Harry Potter, but he did a good job as Julian Pearce, Dorothy's brother and Sean's brother-in-law.

Other smaller parts are well cast; Tony Revolori as Tobe, Sean's commis chef and Jerrika Hinton as Natalie Gorman, Dorothy's friend / therapist. Most notable are Boris McGiver and Alison Elliott as Uncle George and Aunt May, who are hauntingly creepy.

Season 2 is coming in January 2021 and season 3 is already greenlit, so looking forward to seeing where the story goes. I hope it doesn’t get dragged out and lose the essence that made season one so powerfully dark and unnerving.