PASADENA -- In the 1960 Alfred Hitchcock horror film "Psycho," it was made clear how things turned out for cinema's best-known mama's boy. What the new A&E series "The Bates Motel" wants to do is provide some insight into just what would make a loving son keep his mummified mom sitting around the house while he killed motel guests.

"The Bates Motel," from producers Kerry Ehrin and Carlton Cuse, stars Vera Farmiga ("Up In the Air") as Norma Bates and Freddie Highmore ("Charlie and the Chocolate Factory") as the 17-year-old Norman Bates.

Because "Psycho" is such a classic, there would appear to be a definitive end point toward which the series will head. Of course, the producers come from "Lost," a TV series that had a middle, beginning, end, middle and another end.

"When we started talking about the show, the idea of doing a contemporary prequel made it clear that what we were doing was something that was inspired by 'Psycho' but was not an homage to 'Psycho,' and that was a big difference to us," says Cuse. "It just seemed really interesting to us, this sort of fundamental idea of 'how does Norman Bates become the guy who's in that movie.' That was just really a fascinating idea for us."

A tougher hurdle will be getting the audience to connect with Norma and Norman, despite the evil they do. It's the same problem producers of "Dexter" and "Breaking Bad" faced and overcame. The key is in the actors: How likable are they while doing bad things?

Farmiga didn't have a lot to use in creating her character because Norma was dead in the original film. She's basing a lot of her performance on how Norman turns out and what his mother must have done to make him that way.

"I got into this wanting to defend who that woman was. I was sent the first three episodes, and she was just such a beautiful portrait of valiant maternity to me. The story is just a beautiful love letter between a mother and her son, and that's how I perceive the character," says Farmiga. "That's how I approach it."

Farmiga compares playing Norma to the Edvard Munch painting, Madonna, because the work, to her, is warped and exudes the sacred and profane so much that it's psychologically gripping.

Highmore's not giving anything away when he says one day Norman will be psycho. What he's trying to do with the role is show the forces that made Norman the crazed killer he would become.

"Is that necessarily because of his upbringing? It's that sort of argument between nature versus nurture. Is he who he is and will he always become the person that he will become, or is it because they move to this dodgy town and there's a sort of weird relationship -- or certainly close, intimate relationship -- between Norma and Norman," Highmore says. "That challenges the audience to think 'If I was in that situation, if I had had the upbringing that Norman had had, would I be slightly different?'

"You know, we all go a little mad sometimes."

The clue to why Norman goes bat crazy could come from Ehrin, who describes the relationship between mother and son as being "oedipal," meaning there will be unresolved desire by Norman for his mother.

"I think once you're kind of creating a landscape where you're delving into that and you're exploring it and you're trying to make it grounded and real, you create a landscape that balances it. A landscape of people with dark secrets," Ehrin adds.

All of these elements start with Norman as a teen. It will be several years before he becomes the mental motel manager, but Cuse doesn't expect the series to end with Marion Crane driving up to check into the motel.

That would be crazy.

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