The effect of The Curse, the new ten-episode cringe-comedy series on Showtime created by Nathan Fielder (The Rehearsal, Nathan for You) and Bennie Safdie (Uncut Gems), who also star along with Emma Stone, is hard to describe. It’s sort of low key yet excruciating, which is a grim combo. From the beginning, there’s a muted buildup of queasy dread, as the cringe effect gets slowly cranked higher and higher. It seems pretty clear that the series will have to arrive at some sort of appalling horror or mayhem by the end.

And I’m only at the end of episode one, as Showtime releases one hour-long episode per week, perhaps all the public can bear.

I admit I’m an easy cringer, and it would take a lot less than the combined expertise of Fielder and Safdie — both masters of anxiety-producing effects, in their different registers — to make me suffer. If The Curse weren’t so intriguing in its offbeat, mortifying way, I’d never be able to sit through it.