The show is an anthology of horror series, with each season telling a different story.

The first season of the series was about a broken family that moves across America into a house with a history so horrific that it seeps through the walls and ultimately possesses the family.

Season two has just premiered on M-Net Series (two weeks after it did on FX in America), and with it Murphy (along with co-creator Brad Falchuk) has upped the ante. While season one's horrors were largely implicit and left more to the imagination, season two seems more Grindhouse than Gothic.

Under the title American Horror Story: Asylum, this season takes place in 1964 in the Briarcliff Mental Institution, where the doctors and nuns are just as messed up (and disturbing) as the patients they control and torture.

Sister Jude is the sadistic nun portrayed by the brilliant Jessica Lange, who played Constance in season one. A more fitting leading lady of evil could not have been cast.

Other returning cast members are Evan Peters, Zachary Quinto, Lily Rabe and Sarah Paulson. Joining them are James Cromwell, Chloë Sevigny and Joseph Fiennes. Fiennes is Monsignor Timothy Howard, about whom Sister Jude has salacious fantasies (can't say I blame her).

Season two's monster is Bloody Face, a deranged serial killer who skinned his victims alive and wore their faces. While modern Briarcliff is an abandoned hole, dig deeper and you'll find the walls don't just talk, they scream - and Bloody Face still has an appetite to satisfy.

• 'American Horror Story' is on M-Net Series (114), Fridays at 9.31pm