A man kills a dog by beating it with a shovel. You don't see the impact (his jabs are directed towards the camera) but you hear the dog crying and there is audible gore. You see the dog's body afterward. The scene runs from roughly 46:15-46:50. The dog's body is shown again from 51:50-51:60.
In episode 7, a man scares and intimidates a calf that's tied up for slaughter before ultimately smashing it in the head and killing it. The scene runs from 10:35-12:25. It's graphic. In episode 14, a bear is forced to fight a man in a bear pit. It ultimately lives. The scene runs from 4:15-6:10.
A man rapes a teenage girl onscreen in episodes 2 and 3. In episode 4, Darya drugs and rapes her husband while he's semiconscious. A woman and multiple girls are raped on screen in episode 10.
A man rapes a teenage girl onscreen in episodes 2 and 3, and gropes her in episode 4. Also in episode 4, Darya drugs and rapes her husband while he's semiconscious. In episode 10, two women (teenagers) are almost raped, and a woman and multiple young girls are raped onscreen. In episode 12, a teenage girl and her brother (a child) return from a man's house and it's implied the boy was sexually assaulted.
In episode 4, a child's pet bird dies offscreen. Its body is shown motionless in its cage. In episode 7, a man torments a calf that's tied up for slaughter before ultimately smashing it in the head and killing it. The scene runs from 10:35-12:25. It's graphic and upsetting. In episode 8, a woman chops off a chicken's head.
Underage girls are raped onscreen, particularly in episode 10. A teenage girl and her brother (a child) return from a man's house and it's implied the boy was sexually assaulted.
A child's pet bird dies offscreen in episode 4. Its body is shown motionless in its cage. Dead fish are shown in episode 5. A dead calf and dog are shown in episode 7. Dead chickens and many severed chicken heads are shown in episode 8. A dead piglet and dead shrimp are shown at a dinner party in the same episode.
Teenagers are beaten and raped throughout the series. Young Darya is handled roughly. Darya is emotionally abusive toward Seryozha, and in episode 8 she shakes and slaps him repeatedly until he's crying on the floor. In episode 9, a child is spanked by his tutor.
There is a lot of torture and murder in this series. People are raped, whipped, beaten, strangled, stabbed, branded, burned, and more. Eyes are gouged out or stabbed. A tongue and a heart are ripped out. A woman bathes in a girl's blood.
In episode 1, two corpses of servant girls are shown with their eyes gouged out. In episode 5, Darya stabs a man in the eye with a glass shard. He is shown later in episodes 7 and 8 with a wounded eye.
Serving women are whipped in front of the other servants.
In Episode seven, a teenage girl is whipped by her own mother in front of the whole town and her half brother is forced to watch.
Many servants are beaten, whipped, branded, stabbed, choked, burned, and tortured in other ways throughout the series. A girl's tongue is removed in episode 9. A girl's heart is ripped out with bare hands in episode 15. A man is tortured in prison in episode 16. It's implied that at least one finger is removed by a torture device.
In episode 2, someone leaps to their death and takes someone else with them. In episode 6, we are told that someone else died by suicide. In episode 10, a young girl who has been brutally raped drowns herself in a bog.
One of Darya's noble neighbors comes to visit. She is fat. No verbal jokes are made, but she is demeaned by the guards. At one point she trips and falls on the stairs. She is shown through the guards legs, embarrassed as she picks herself up. No other characters are depicted this way in the show, so it read as a fat joke to me.
Avdotya whips her teenage daughter until she bleeds in episode 7, though she does it on Darya's orders. Darya is emotionally abusive toward Seryozha, and in episode 8 she shakes and slaps him repeatedly until he's crying on the floor.
Many of the editing choices involve quick cuts between angles, spinning cameras, doubling up effects. They are not particularly bright, but did cause me vertigo and irritate my migraines.
In episode 14, a carriage is set on fire with people inside. In episode 16, many people are locked in a church and it's set on fire. Some survive, but not all. Another woman is pushed into a fire and graphically burned, but she survives with severe injuries.
Darya gaslights the serfs and tells them it's their fault they are being punished or twists the truth of the situation when she punishes others. There is a lot of gaslighting in her relationship with Avdotya and then Avdotya attempts the same with the other servants of the house.
A number of the antagonists have a history of being abused, particularly Avdotya, who was raped and mistreated as a girl and grew to be cruel and unsympathetic toward her fellow serfs.
In episode 1, Darya repeatedly stabs her doll in the eye before abandoning it. In episode 13, a doll is cut apart with scissors and has an organ sewn into its belly as part of a spell. It turns out to be the same doll she abandoned as a child.
In episode 6, a character is poisoned. They gasp throughout the episode but don't die. In episode 10, two people are suffocated. In episode 12, someone is strangled.
Darya's father dies of a stroke. Before he passes away, he talks with Gleb, Darya's husband. He struggles to communicate through his half paralyzed face.
In episode 4, someone's head is smashed with a heavy object and it kills them. In episode 12, Darya smashes a servant girl's head into a wall and kills her.
In episode 8, Avdotya stabs her own palm with a sewing needle. Darya squeezes a glass so hard that it breaks and she cuts her hand. The open wound on her palm is shown later. In episode 12, Darya forces a servant's hands into boiling water. In episode 15, two men touch a poisoned letter and their hands turn red and blistered.
A man is tortured in prison and it's implied that his fingers are pinched off, based on the torture device used, but it isn't shown onscreen. You just see him reacting.