Why Servant – M Night Shyamalan’s bonkers, baroque horror – is the most demented drama on TV

A woman stands on a roof gazing at the Philadelphia skyline. In her arms, she cradles a baby. Rain pours down. Is this a happy scene of two people taking in the view? Or something darker?

That note of ambivalence, struck in the opening credits to Apple TV+’s Servant, is the fuel that has sustained the ruthlessly bonkers series across four seasons (the last of which is now wending its way to an end). At once a gruelling horror tale, relationship psychodrama and camp romp it’s like nothing else on television. But the real surprise is that this frothing fandango has been overseen by none other than M Night Shyamalan, the filmmaker regarded as having misplaced his mojo shortly after The Sixth Sense in 1999.

For the past 20-plus years, Shyamalan has been haunted by the ghosts of his early triumphs. With The Sixth Sense and follow-up Unbreakable the director created a new filmmaking vernacular. The combination was unique, Hitchcock levels of technical verve serving storylines dafter than cocktail hour with the Mad Hatter.

Then came a stream of silly stinkers. They included Lady In the Water, in which Bryce Dallas Howard portrays a confused mermaid named Story. And The Happening, in which Mark Wahlberg plays a confused dad fleeing killer plants.

He struck rock bottom in 2010 with an adaptation of the Avatar: Last Airbender cartoon so loopily unfaithful it annoys fans to this day. With these projects Shyamalan the auteur was eclipsed by Shyamalan the oddball. If his early films married style and substance, now he was reliant on wacky plots and nothing else. There were times even he seemed exhausted by the absurdity.

That’s all changed with his latest feature, Knock at the Cabin. Adapting Paul Tremblay’s 2018 horror novel The Cabin at the End of the World, Shyamalan has his moribund mojo back.

“Clever, stirring and suspenseful,” said The Telegraph’s Tim Robey of Knock at the Cabin, which stars Jonathan Groff and Ben Aldridge as a couple holidaying with their daughter and Dave Bautista as a cultist. “A harrowing, economical thriller that will sit with you for days,” agreed Empire.

So is it too soon to declare the Shyamalan-aissance underway? If anything, it might be too late. That's because, even as he lurched from turkey to turkey on the big screen, with Servant on Apple TV +the director was spinning the most satisfyingly baroque tales of his career.

It is also his most demented. At full tilt, Servant hits like eyes-on-stalks remix of Twin Peaks, Gone Baby Gone and – thanks to a subplot involving a shouty chef – Gordon Rasmay’s Kitchen Nightmares. It’s even got Rupert Grint playing an embittered middle-aged version of his Harry Potter character. Ron Weasley is in hell and Shyamalan wants us to join him.

Above all, Servant is an extravagant exercise in gas-lighting – of both its characters and the audience. It opens in an upper-middle-class home in Shyamalan’s native Philadelphia. Here, pushy news reporter Dorothy (Lauren Ambrose) and her husband, “stay-at-home consulting chef” Seán (Toby Kebbell), live with their newborn baby.

Only the baby isn’t real. The actual Jericho died at 13 weeks. To cope with the unimaginable trauma, the couple are undergoing a process called “transitory object territory”, which involves treating a “reborn” doll as if it’s an actual baby. The baby indeed appears to be alive. But whether this is projection on the part of Dorothy and Seán or a trick on the viewer is hard to say. Either way, we’re initially with Dorothy in believing the infant alive (until Seán nonchalantly thwacks its head off a wall).

That’s just the start of the hysteria. To help “care” for Jericho they’ve hired a nanny, Leanne (Nell Tiger Free), whom, we gradually learn, has fled an apocalyptic cult. Leanne has supernatural powers and appears to turn fake Jericho into a real child. Rest assured all is not as it seems. Her behaviour is secretive and sinister; people in her orbit have a habit of getting into nasty situations (not least Dorothy who is almost crippled by a fall at the end of season three).

On paper, it sounds deranged – but not excessively so. Certainly nowhere near as bonkers as The Happening, where vengeful shrubs turn people suicidal. Yet it is in its execution that Servant dials up the craziness. Seán’s consulting chef gig, for instance, involves dishes that would give David Lynch a queasy tummy: live eel dashed to pieces on his chopping board, vacuum-sealed grasshoppers injected with sugar. The food is both beautiful and stomach-turning. Then, in the later seasons, he takes on a new job hosting that Gordon Rasmay-style reality show, Gourmet Gauntlet, which largely involves roaring at contestants.

Tiger Free’s Leanne is even creepier. Initially, she is as still as a spider crouched on a web. Season by season, though, we learn of her traumatising upbringing with the “Church of Lesser Saints”. And of the extremes to which she is prepared to go to stay close to Jericho  – potentially including the attempted murder of Dorothy (did that stairs truly collapse or was she pushed?).

Servant excels at making the everyday disturbing. There’s a terrifying scene in the latest season in which cultists from the Church of Lesser Saints – a group of “fallen angels performing God’s will on earth”– track down Leanne. They are then attacked, presumably at Leanne's behest, by homicidal pigeons. It’s Hitchcock on amphetamines. And when two sweet old dears are hired by Dorothy to help her recover (and protect her from Leanne), Servant makes sure we know all about their collection of sex toys.

If that suggests midnight dark humour that’s because this is what Shyamalan and show co-creator Tony Basgallop (a British writer who knows all about unhinged telly, having got his start on Casualty) are striving for above all else.

“This dark humour, but underneath a very powerful emotional engine, that balance of the two. That’s my favourite combination right now,” said Shyamalan. “What drew me to the idea was like, the idea of this trauma that happened is so moving, but how they’re dealing with it is bonkers.”

Bonkers is one word for Servant. Actually, it's the only word. Here is a series so bizarre it makes Shyamalan's big-screen forays – Knock at the Cabin included – feel like kitchen sink drama by comparison.

“When something bad happens, and you pretend that it didn’t,” Grint’s Julian tells Leanne during season three, “it eats your insides.” That’s Servant in a nutshell – a psychodrama that never tells you what’s going on but gets inside your head with its ever-rising dread. It’s by far the craziest show on streaming. It’s also one of the scariest.