Servant: parents' guide

Jarring and at times gory: a chef slices open burn blisters and nails live eels to a board, and a dog is killed. Later seasons add a woman buried alive, stabbings with red-hot blades, one through an eye, and a fatal shooting.

Frequent f-words: Plugged In counted four in one early episode, more than a dozen in another and 15 in the season 2 premiere. Also s-words, crude terms for body parts and sex acts, and some misuse of God's name.

Affairs and sex, mostly implied or brief, with the camera cutting away. A bath scene hides private parts, and the nanny massages the mother's breasts in a charged scene. The mother's brother has sex with a family friend and later with the 18-year-old nanny.

Wine and whiskey flow all day and characters get sloppy drunk. The mother's brother is an alcoholic who snorts cocaine, overdoses at a holiday party and is revived, then goes to rehab. A therapist slips melatonin into the mother's tea.

Constant unease built around a dead baby, a mother's breakdown and a nanny with eerie powers. Expect a cult, a seance, body horror, a grieving mother who has to be talked down from a noose, the nanny whipping and cutting herself, and a fiery finale.