Parents' Guide to Shut Eye

With an utterly unique setting and appealing actors, this drama intrigues, but it has so many subplots and side characters that keeping it all straight requires patience. Careful viewers, however, will find things to like about Shut Eye and its outlandish swings. Not only is Charlie a failed magician and fake psychic who starts having real visions, he's beset with a bitter wife, dangerous mob bosses (under the unhinged rule of Isabella Rossellini!), an ominous client who implies that he'll use his considerable criminal connections to bring Charlie new business, a therapist who doles out psychedelics, and a horny and anxious teenage son who needs Dad's guidance (and a ride to therapy). It's a lot to take in, but it's compelling stuff, particularly for anyone who's ever wondered just what lay beyond those neon strip-mall signs promising answers to life's many questions.