The central question with AMC’s new Feed the Beast may be whether exquisite images of upscale food are enough to balance a dark story that seems to have almost no path to a happy ending.

Feed the Beast, which premieres Sunday at 10 p.m. ET, is adapted from another of those ominous Scandinavian shows where it’s always raining and no one smiles.

That doesn’t make it a bad show. But viewers should know upfront that once it moves to its regular time slot Tuesdays at 10 p.m. ET, gloom will always be somewhere on the menu.

David Schwimmer and Jim Sturgess (both, top), the two stars, serve their parts well.

Schwimmer plays Tommy Moran, who is raising his young son TJ (Elijah Jacob, right, with Schwimmer and Sturgess) alone since his wife Rie (Christine Adams) was killed a year earlier in a hit-and-run.

Rie’s death has pretty much killed Tommy, too, and what he mostly does now is drink. It doesn’t help that T.J., who witnessed the fatal accident, hasn’t spoken a word since.

Sturgess plays Dion Patras, a world-class chef whose own dream meal is a served on a mirror through a rolled-up $20 bill.

A little over a year ago, Dion, Tommy and Rie were all working at an upscale restaurant. Rie and Dion were chefs, Tommy the sommelier. They were well on the way to opening their own restaurant, a high-end, upscale operation called Thirio, in the Bronx. Yes, the Bronx. It’s the new Brooklyn, Dion said.

Then, right around the time Rie died, Dion went on a coke jag and burned down their current restaurant. This sent Dion to prison for a year and annoyed the owner of the restaurant, a scary fellow who calls himself “The Tooth Fairy.” Seems that if an employee burns the joint down, the insurance company won’t pay anything. Darn!

Now Dion is out of the pen and The Tooth Fairy wants reimbursement. Also, a crooked cop is squeezing Dion to rat out The Tooth Fairy. This sets up a whole chain of possibilities for Dion, none very upbeat.

By the end of the first episode, Dion has talked Tommy into reviving Thirio. Dion may be an irresponsible coke addict, but he’s as good at persuasion as he is at a butternut squash reduction.

Now he just has to persuade The Tooth Fairy not to kill him and everyone he cares about.

Dion also has relationship issues. Big surprise.

Tommy, meanwhile, is told by the school counselor that if T.J. continues to fail his classes and Tommy continues to drink, she may have to call child services. Tommy also realizes that funding the new restaurant means getting a loan from his father, with whom he hasn’t spoken in 10 years.

Now it’s possible that Feed the Beast has stacked its deck with all this potentially bad stuff because that will make it even more heartwarming when our heroes rise Rocky-like from the ashes.

Imagine a bad ending for The Tooth Fairy and a good ending for Tommy, Dion, T.J. and The Bronx.

It’s not out of the question. Stranger things have happened on television, though history suggests they don’t happen all that often on Scandinavian television.

Perhaps encouraging us to hold out that kind of long-shot hope, Feed the Beast does make us care about its characters. It also makes the roasted octopus look quite appetizing, if that’s your idea of an upscale dinner.

Meanwhile, just don’t expect the daily special to be a lot of laughs.