If you like the jar with the baby’s leg, wait until you see the jar holding the baby’s head. If one actress with Down syndrome doesn’t provide enough Tod Browning-style otherness for you, don’t worry — there are two. If the line about snorting cocaine off a high school girl’s nipples doesn’t do it for you, maybe the scene of the sobbing naked man masturbating will.  And if the fact that half his face has been burned off doesn’t make Denis O’Hare’s character creepily sympathetic enough for you, how about this: He has brain cancer too!  One of the early questions about “American Horror Story” on FX has been whether fans of the chirpy Fox musical series “Glee” would follow the producers and writers Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk to a new show billed as an extreme (for television) creepfest. Based on Wednesday’s premiere, the Gleeks should feel perfectly at home with “Horror Story.” The similarities are greater than the differences, and they start with the love of excess that stretches through “Glee” and back to the first Murphy-Falchuk collaboration, “Nip/Tuck.”  Other, less palatable hallmarks of their method are here as well: a certain hollow theatricality, a willingness to accept one-dimensional characters and pat story lines while concentrating on stylish set pieces and shock effects, the way every line of dialogue and situation seems to sit within invisible quotation marks.  It’s too bad, because “American Horror Story” has the potential to be a lot of fun, if that style and cleverness can be eventually coupled with characters we care about and a narrative that feels less like a haunted house sampler, stitched with threads of Stephen King, Hammer Films and Lars von Trier’s TV series “The Kingdom.”  Disaffected daughter who befriends disturbed boy? Check. Thematic connection of blood, violence, female sexuality and violation of the body? Check. Strobe-lighted scenes of small, murderous people in “Little House on the Prairie” nightclothes? Check.  For now, the cast alone makes the show worth checking out. Connie Britton, lately of “Friday Night Lights,” is the star, and once again she’s excellent — taut, exposed, completely credible — as a strong but wounded wife and mother. Her Vivien Harmon has a big dose of horror show back story: six months after a bloody miscarriage she walked in on her husband, Ben, having sex with a student, which precipitated the family’s cross-country move to the Los Angeles Victorian spook house they arrive at as the show opens.  Ms. Britton is particularly good in the scene that has drawn the most advance comment, in which Vivien has sex with a silent, bondage-suited man she mistakenly thinks is Ben. It’s a situation that doesn’t make sense even in TV-fantasy terms: earlier in the day, after a screaming match, Vivien and Ben have made love for the first time in a year, and her nonchalance when the rubber man suddenly appears — oh, you’re ready for another round? — rings false. But Ms. Britton sells Vivien’s abandon and vulnerability, and she conjures a hauntedness that isn’t necessarily in the script.  Dylan McDermott, as the often naked and very buff Ben, and Taissa Farmiga (Vera’s sister) as the standard-issue defensive daughter, are also good, though the family members’ performances all seem to be on slightly different frequencies. (Mr. Murphy directed the pilot.) Jessica Lange, in the diva role of the aging Southern belle next door, appears to have wandered in from a completely different show, or more likely a Tennessee Williams play, but it doesn’t prevent her from being entertaining. Mr. O’Hare appears briefly at the end of the episode, giving us something to look forward to.  Also in the cast is Frances Conroy, sharing with Alexandra Breckenridge the role of a mysterious housemaid; in a nifty twist, Vivien sees the older maid at the same time that Ben sees (and sees a lot of) the younger one. Ms. Conroy is reprising her gargoyle turn from “Six Feet Under,” and her presence is a reminder of how Mr. Murphy’s style here echoes that of the “Six Feet Under” creator, Alan Ball.  FX certainly had in mind the success of Mr. Ball’s current show on HBO, “True Blood,” and of “The Walking Dead” on AMC when it picked up “American Horror Story.” The new show is a more classically minded chiller, but it has some of the lurid expansiveness of “True Blood,” filling the basement of the Harmons’ house with more rusty medical instruments and jars of baby parts than you can count.  Before the hourlong premiere is over, we’ve been made aware of at least eight ghosts that may be haunting the premises and providing material for future story arcs. It hasn’t occurred to the Harmons yet that they might want to follow Eddie Murphy’s advice about haunted houses (in “Delirious”) and tip out the door. But one thing “American Horror Story” doesn’t have an excess of is diversity, and as that Mr. Murphy said, white people in haunted houses never get the hint.  FX, Wednesday nights at 10, Eastern and Pacific times; 9, Central time.  Produced by 20th Century Fox. Created and written by Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk; directed by Mr. Murphy; Mr. Murphy, Mr. Falchuk, Dante Di Loreto, executive producers; Jennifer Salt and James Wong, co-executive producers; Tim Minear, consulting producer; Chip Vucelich, line producer; Alexis Martin Woodall, producer; Jessica Sharzer and Brad Buecker, supervising producers.  WITH: Connie Britton (Vivien Harmon), Dylan McDermott (Ben Harmon), Jessica Lange (Constance), Denis O’Hare (Larry Harvey), Taissa Farmiga (Violet Harmon), Evan Peters (Tate), Frances Conroy (Moira), Alexandra Breckenridge (Moira Junior) and Jamie Brewer (Adelaide).
âAmerican Horror Storyâ on FX, from a pair of âGleeâ writers and producers, brings a love of excess to the lives of a family moving into a haunted house.