Removing the trauma is an uphill struggle

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“This family can’t deal with trauma,” Sean says in an early episode of the fourth and final season of Servants, and basically this is the theme of the entire series: in order not to speak aloud of evil, in order to be able to continue undisturbed to prepare elaborate dinners washed down with fine wines, the Turners would be willing to do more or less anything. In fact, the whole story stems from a denied trauma: Dorothy (Lauren Ambrose), left alone by both her husband Sean (Toby Kebbell) and her brother Julian (Rupert Grint) with a few weeks old baby to look after, has forgotten him in car for an entire sultry August day. Jericho is dead, but Dorothy doesn’t remember him and everyone would like to pretend nothing happened.

Overlooked by the major awards and made it to the final season without attracting much attention, Servants instead it is one of the best things produced by Apple TV +, even if it is understandable that it does not meet everyone’s taste. The main creators, Tony Basgallop as screenwriter and M. Night Shyamalan as director, had fun building a story that continually twists on itself, announces revelations that never come, provocatively abuses the viewers’ patience by accumulating mysteries upon mysteries. Who or what is Leanne (Nell Tiger Free), Dorothy’s hired nanny? Did she really bring Jericho back to life or did she kidnap someone else’s baby?

Two episodes from the end we still don’t know, but in the meantime the clash between Dorothy and Leanne for control of the family has reached its climax, with the first immobilized in bed, after the fall from the stairs that had closed the previous season, and the second increasingly fearfully sure of himself and his powers. But the circle tightens on both, and never before Dorothy seems one step away from remembering what happened, Leanne from revealing her nature.

Deep down, however, it’s not to know how it ends up the real reason we looked Servantsor at least not only: the extremely refined direction, the grandiose performances of the cast, the cruelly comic findings, all contribute to the creation of a disturbing and original bourgeois interior, an Ibsenian drama for our time, which knows how to move between horror and dark comedy with splendid lightness.

Servants