Crafting a compelling thriller for television in the streaming era is a delicate art. There has been an explosion of these kinds of shows over the last decade, whether or not they’re based on a true story. It requires a careful weaving of tense twists, performances that showcase some of the widest ranges of human emotion, all the while writing a plot that doesn’t get convoluted or boring to watch.
Netflix’s latest offering, “The Beast in Me,” created by “The X-Files” writer Gabe Rotter and executive produced by Jodie Foster and Conan O’Brien, mostly hits the sweet spot. It helps that it’s anchored by two incredibly strong performances in Claire Danes and Matthew Rhys, television veterans who have more than proven their abilities to chew into complex characters in shows like “Homeland” and “The Americans,” respectively.
Danes plays Aggie Wiggs, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author living alone in a decrepit but beautiful house in Long Island, New York. She’s regretfully divorced from her wife Shelley (Natalie Morales), a relationship that fell apart after the death of their young son. Aggie is stuck writing her next book about the friendship between Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia, and hasn’t been able to turn in pages to her editor (Deirdre O’Connell) for years now. She’s struggling to pay her bills and desperately needs to renovate the house’s failing plumbing.
In divine timing, a notorious real estate mogul moves in next door. Like Aggie, Nile Jarvis (Rhys) is also retreating from society — though in his case, it’s after the very public disappearance of his ex-wife. He has been the subject of tabloids and true crime investigations that blame him for Madison’s murder. He denies any involvement, but the body has yet to be found, and he’s now remarried to Nina (Brittany Snow), a gallerist.
Aggie and Nile strike up a neighborly friendship. As they get more vulnerable with each other, Aggie shares about the young man she holds responsible for her son’s death via car crash. The next day, the young man in question disappears. Understandably, she can’t help but think Nile has something to do with it. To dig deeper (and advance her own career in the process), she decides to use this newfound access to him to shape the subject of her next book and investigate further. She has found the muse again, but at what cost?
What shapes the rest of the season is a game of cat and mouse. To try and find evidence of her sneaking suspicions, Aggie partners up with an FBI agent who has a vested interest in bringing Nile down, while Nile evades any interrogations. “I killed my wife,” he says early in the season. “I mean, that’s what everyone thinks, right? So it must be true,” he quickly clarifies.
Rhys, unsurprisingly, plays this menacing maybe-murderer ambiguity to perfection. He is calculated, ice cold, any vulnerability barely to be seen. It’s clear there’s something off about him, though: It’s evident early on when he smashes someone’s phone at a restaurant after he catches them taking photos of him, and slurps on bones of a rotisserie chicken like an animal, something out of “The Substance.” Is it all just pent-up frustration from being accused of a crime he did not commit, or is he in fact the murderer everyone suspects him to be? When it comes to his culpability, “The Beast in Me” keeps its cards close to the chest, making every twist and reveal along the way that much juicier by the end of the season.
It’s not a total surprise HBO’s “The Staircase” director Antonio Campos is behind the camera here on top of his producing duties, another show that was interested in exploring all dimensions of a man being accused of murdering his wife. “The Beast in Me” has an HBO-worthy sheen to it, too, playing with light, shadow and camerawork for a stylish series that easily outweighs the more generic-looking thrillers that have made their way to Netflix.
“The Beast in Me” crackles when it zeroes in on Aggie and Nile, either separately or together. The unlikely friendship they form finds the perfect balance of entertaining while revealing important pieces of the puzzle. Danes is in top form here in another collaboration with “Homeland” showrunner Howard Gordon, and her out-of-breath, slightly manic disposition feels very reminiscent of her Emmy-winning work as CIA agent Carrie Mathison without being derivative.
When the show zooms out at the other moving pieces on the chess board meant to fill an eight-episode order, things get a little less interesting. Nile and his father (Jonathan Banks) are working to gentrify “Jarvis Yards,” a neighborhood in New York City, despite significant opposition from councilwoman Olivia Benitez (Aleyse Shannon), who is leading protests that are turning the tide on a city vote to rezone the neighborhood. That storyline never quite gels with the rest of the story, mostly serving to make sure Nile has a few balls in the air other than dodging Aggie’s attempts to uncover his secrets.
His father has a lot of control over him, though, with Nile’s uncle essentially acting as his daily handler and bodyguard. But like the councilwoman, these characters don’t ever get enough interiority to really feel like more than pawns on the board to move the story forward.
Somewhat more captivating are the FBI storylines. Brian Abbot (David Lyons) has investigated Nile before, so we get a good sense of his hunger to catch him red-handed. He happens to have a relationship with another FBI agent, Erika Breton (Hettienne Park), in fabulous trench coats, who is wrapped up with the Jarvis family in her own way. It is clear early on that with so much of the city in this wealthy family’s pockets, Aggie can’t rely on anyone to uncover the truth, making her the only fully transparent character the viewer can root for.
These storylines aside, “The Beast in Me” is extremely propulsive and well paced. Flashes of intense violence will definitely peel your eyes away from your phone if you’ve wandered to second screen viewing accidentally during one of the real estate scenes, and overall, contains performances that are worth tuning in for on their own.
The miniseries structure also allows the story to come to a satisfying conclusion, and the show isn’t afraid to deliver reveals directly, like in a straightforward flashback episode late in the season that lifts the veil on more than a few mysteries.
It won’t be a total surprise to see “The Beast in Me” jump to first place on the Netflix streaming charts in the coming days — it feels engineered for that kind of success. But in the broader landscape of crime thrillers, this original story is well-deserving of a furious binge with performances that will have you yelling “Emmy!” at your television.
“The Beast in Me” is now streaming on Netflix.