Shyamalan shines again in a series to claim

‘Servants’ is a creation of the British Tony Basgalop (‘Inside men’), but it has the mark, above all, of its producer and occasional director M.Night Shyamalan, who bets on it for the creation of atmospheres, precision in the form or, why not, his recent passion for balancing tension with doses of humor. It must be one of the best projects in which he has left his mark, but the series is still a well-kept secret of a few, perhaps because it was released on Apple TV + when this platform was not yet a favorite of critics, but above all the object of skepticism .

But it’s never too late to approach a series, and even less one this intense, direct, concrete: the episodes usually don’t last half an hour. Especially intense in the third season, perhaps because it is the penultimate, that is, the delivery in which the pieces have to be arranged for the final play. We are closer to knowing how the curious coexistence between the Turner couple (Lauren Ambrose Y Toby Kebbell), her ‘reborn’ baby turned into a real baby and the mysterious babysitter (Nell Tiger Free) arrival from a Midwestern sect to guard the child from all evils.

At the beginning of the season, experimental chef Sean and television reporter Dorothy want to make themselves believe that they live a normal life. But Leanne, the ‘nanny’ of strange powers, is still traumatized by the events of a few months ago and doesn’t trust that newly installed six thousand dollar security system. Halfway between one and the other, Julian (Rupert Grint), Dorothy’s little brother, tries to rebuild his life with a new girlfriend (the excellent Sunita Mani from ‘GLOW’) while becoming obsessed with the idea of ​​proving that little Jericho is, in fact, Leanne’s son. To prove it, you can take desperate measures and, along the way, give us one of the best episodes of the series: ‘Hair’, third of the season.

Shyamalan shines in the opening episode (‘Donkey’), a master class in visual storytelling with compositions of perfect asymmetry. And far from looking for people who do not overshadow him, in later episodes he again offers the alternative to great promises of fantastic and/or independent cinema. ‘Hair’ is directed by Carlo Mirabella-Davis, the author of a well-regarded film, ‘Swallow,’ about pica, the disorder that causes cravings for unnutritious things. It makes perfect sense: in this series everything, but perhaps especially the food, has an aura of menace.

On the other hand, Ishana Night Shyamalan (talented daughter of the director) takes charge of the episode about a tense meeting of moms; Dylan Holmes-Williams (awarded at Sundance with the short film ‘The devil’s harmony’) tackles certain problems with the food grinder, and the tandem formed by Celine Held Y logan george (‘Topside’, awarded at the South by Southwest festival) marks virtuous moments in an episode that breaks quite a lot with the visual framework of the series.

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Although brilliant, this chapter invites us to think that, when its fourth season arrives, ‘Servant’ could become a somewhat more conventional series than it was at first. The old claustrophobia, the shadows, the gothic angst of that only seemingly idyllic semi-detached house could be missing… The twisted ‘huis clos’ character of a series once equidistant from suffocating terror and the darkest ‘sitcom’ imaginable. It will probably still be good, but good in a less unique way.