On Apple TV + it’s back Servant, a series that has created a small cult of admirers and that is as easy to love as it is to hate (I rank in the first group, but I perfectly understand the reasons of the others). The third season began in late January and will end on March 25.
Created by Tony Basgallop and with M. Night Shyamalan directing many episodes, Servant is one of those TV series based on a central mystery, set in the first episodes and carried on indefinitely: Dorothy and Sean Turner, a couple of well-known bourgeois from Filadeflia, have lost a baby of a few months. Dorothy has never accepted what happened, also because she is largely to blame, and she is convinced that a replacement doll is really her son Jericho, to the point of hiring a babysitter, the very young and mysterious Leanne. Shortly after her arrival at the Turner house, the doll disappears and instead of her there is a real baby. Leanne acts like nothing had happened, for Dorothy everything is as before, Sean has not the faintest idea of what to do. From here on you can see all the colors: Leanne is part of a sect of religious fanatics, Jericho disappears and returns, in the cellar of the Turner house a chasm opens up that cannot be closed again, and so on.
In each episode there is an event that seems to be able to finally explain the mystery, or at least definitively decide whether we are in the presence of the supernatural or not, but in the end in most cases everything is resolved in nothing. The new season is closer to the point of view of Leanne, who lives in terror of being attacked by the followers of the sect she was a part of and which she has now openly betrayed. As in the previous ones, none of the mysteries are solved, and indeed new ones are added.
But the right attitude to appreciate Servant is not expecting the mystery to be solved at all, and instead enjoying this hilarious swing between the thriller fantastic and satirical comedy. The real pleasure, as well as in the refinement of direction, scenography and costumes, lies in the contrast between the couple of bourgeois citizens, as snobbish and cynical as they are helpless and unaware, and the countrywoman Leanne, who admires and despises them at the same time.
Servant 3
Tony Basgallop
M. Night Shyamalan
Apple TV+