‘American Horror Story’ off to a good, creepy start

His character, Ben Harmon, is a central figure in the new horror-themed drama “American Horror Story” that premiered last week on FX.

McDermott’s angular, expressive face carries a brood beautifully. You can easily imagine this man on a stage, perfectly inhabiting a tragic role like Lear or Richard or Macbeth. And while I found his dark, obsessive widower to be a poor anchor in the cable crime procedural “Dark Blue,” his Ben Harmon – discovered in flagrante delicto by his wife, Vivien, played by Connie Britton, more than a year before the current storyline – echoes the deeply flawed character he explored so brilliantly for years as Bobby Donnelly in “The Practice.”

Ben is reformed -- he’s fully reformed. A year after his affair nearly destroyed his family, he seeks a fresh start, moving his private psychiatric practice from Boston to Los Angeles.

If we were to stop right there that would be a plenty good enough basis for a dark family drama. One of the first things that happens is one of his teenaged patients, Tate -- who I’d have thought was a perfectly certifiable psychopath based on his sessions with Ben -- becomes interested in his teenaged daughter, Violet, played by Taissa Farmiga.

This would be horrifying enough for any father -- having explored Tate’s psychoses and dark imaginings in session, witnessing him romancing his somewhat alienated and perhaps even suicidal daughter -- but in what I believe will be a recurring theme with the show, whenever you’ve discovered a dark place, there will be an even deeper, darker place beneath it.

That’s what seems to be going on with the house itself. We are introduced to the abandoned house in 1978 with Adelaide, a strange, apparently mentally handicapped girl, standing outside of it telling a pair of twins seeking to retrieve their baseball that the house will kill them if they go inside.

Of course they ignore her. And of course it does. But not until after they discover a macabre exhibition of body parts in jars, and the ghoulish malevolent wraith who rips their throats out.

This troubling history traces further to include some horrific murals Vivien discovers reminiscent of Dante’s “Inferno,” and some fetish gear apparently left by the former occupants, a gay couple, including a full body rubber suit. At least one family was burned alive in the house -- Ben is confronted by Denis O’Hare in the role of Larry Harvey, the father who’d calmly burned his wife and daughter to death sometime in the 1950s. Harvey, himself badly scarred from the arson, claimed the voices told him to do it.

This should get Ben worried, but he’s got enough to deal with trying to rebuild his relationship with his wife -- they haven’t made love since she caught him in bed a year before with one of his students, and before that, after she’d suffered a miscarriage.

This is a family that’s already been through hell, and it’s going to get worse. Daughter Violet, a depressed teenage girl with a history of cutting herself, is being bullied at school. Violet confides in Tate, who gets Violet to lure her bully into the basement where he is apparently possessed by that wraith I mentioned up there and attacks the bully violently.

Rounding out the cast, Jessica Lange plays Constance, the neighbor woman and Adelaide’s mother. She’s a piece of work. You never know where she’s going to pop up and what she’s gonna say next. Constance and Adelaide apparently have the run of the house -- the wild-eyed Adelaide herself pops up unexpectedly to laugh maniacally at Vivien and make dark pronouncements.

And then there’s the maid, Moira. I’ve got to say, Moira adds a deeply intriguing dimension to this mix. Along with whatever dark history she and Constance share, Moira is played by two actresses -- the brilliantly understated Frances Conroy as the elder Moira and the much younger, impossibly beautiful Alex Breckenridge.

The reason this is so intriguing is that Breckenridge isn’t playing Moira in flashbacks. Rather, the alluring and aggressively flirtatious Breckenridge is how Moira appears to Ben. Everyone else sees Conroy.

Add to this the fact that someone or something is occasionally inhabiting the rubber suit to seduce Vivien, and ... this show is willing to explore some strange, dark places.

But I’d expect nothing less from show creator Ryan Murphy, whose intricate and disturbing storytelling on “Nip/Tuck” only hinted at the sort of things he’s capable of. I have a feeling he’s going to showcase all of them in this production.

“American Horror Story” airs at 10/9c Thursdays on FX. It carries an MA rating for excellent reasons, so viewer discretion is advised.