Aggie Wiggs (Claire Danes), who won a Pulitzer Prize for her first novel, is struggling with a severe case of writer’s block. She lives in a large rambling house in a fancy New York suburb. She is grieving the loss of her eight-year-old son, who was killed by a teenage drunk driver, Teddy Fenig (Bubba Weiler).
The Beast in Me (English)
Episodes: 8 (41–54 minutes)
Creator: Gabe Rotter
Starring: Claire Danes, Matthew Rhys, Brittany Snow, Natalie Morales
Storyline: A grieving author with writer’s block crosses swords with her enigmatic neighbour
On the anniversary of her son’s death, Aggie is disturbed by the barking of a pair of huge dogs. She realises they belong to her neighbour, the real estate tycoon Nile Jarvis (Matthew Rhys), who has just moved in. Nile is suspected of murdering his wife, Maddie (Leila George).
When Aggie sees Teddy and his mother laying flowers at her son’s gravesite, she rails against them. Nile offers to take Aggie out for lunch in an effort to start over. When her editor, Carol (Deirdre O’Connell), calls about the progress of her second book, Aggie remembers Nile saying over lunch that her second book project sounds boring and that the populace only has a taste for “gossip and carnage.”
As a throwaway line, Nile suggests she writes a book about him. Aggie pitches the idea to Carol, and is drawn deeper into Nile’s complicated life. She meets Nile’s second wife, Nina (Brittany Snow), his father, Martin (Jonathan Banks) and his wife, Lila (Julie Ann Emery) at Nile’s step-brothers’ birthday party. Martin’s brother, Rick (Tim Guinee), lives with Nile as his security detail.
An FBI agent, Brian Abbott (David Lyons), who seems to have gone to pieces in an attempt to nail Nile, warns Aggie about Nile. Abbott’s co-worker, Erika (Hettienne Park), wants him to leave Nile alone. Aggie meets Maggie’s parents, Mariah (Kate Burton) and James (Bill Irwin), who only have nice things to say about Nile, a sentiment not shared by Maggie’s brother, Chris (Will Brill).
There is also a city councilwoman, Olivia Benitez (Aleyse Shannon), who is opposing the Jarvis’ expansion plans. Through the easily bingeable eight episodes, we learn about the characters and their motivations, even as the different layers of truth are peeled to reveal another layer of obfuscation and interpretation.
While Danes’ tics and mannerisms have not moved past her Carrie from Homeland, Rhys is endlessly brilliant as the charming, arrogant, and the dangerous yet endlessly fascinating Nile (why is he named after a river, though?).
The clue that breaks the case wide open that Aggie uncovers, having slipped past the eyes of all the police and FBI agents, does take one out of the show as does the penultimate episode, which is a flashback, and slows the pace.
For all those quibbles, The Beast in Me is a layered exposition on the human condition in beautiful houses and woods. When Nile dances to the Talking Heads’ ‘Psycho Killer’, is he confessing or feeling the music? Are Aggie’s clogged pipes emblematic of all the facts she is not willing to face up to? As her ex-wife, Shelley (Natalie Morales) tells her despairingly, “You would rather invent a murder than look in the mirror.”
In the end, apart from unmasking the killer, Aggie admits to “cradling vengeance like a second grief,” and telling herself “the story she needed to hear”. The Beast in Me, which is the name of Aggie’s second book (Nile makes a crucial change in the title), is an adrenaline-fuelled ride through the funhouse mirrors of human wants and loss, shepherded by Rhys’ extraordinary performance. Incidentally, none of the dogs, including Aggie’s cute little dog, Steve, come to sticky ends.
The Beast in Me is currently streaming on Netflix
Published – November 15, 2025 06:01 pm IST
