In a market seemingly flooded by various degrees of “edgy” takes on superhero franchises or rebooted legacy IP, Netflix’s new drama The Beast In Me is just the thing I’ve been looking for.
The Beast In Me is a properly grown-up original limited series that has proper grown-up characters saying and doing properly grown-up stuff. Aggie Wiggs (Claire Danes, never better) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author whose work on the follow-up has completely stalled following the death of her young son in a road accident some years prior, the incident leading to the breakdown of her marriage.
Aggie’s creative impulses are sparked once more when her new neighbour turns out to be wealthy real estate magnate Nile Jarvis (Matthew Rhys), a divisive figure on the New York business scene who is suspected by many as being responsible for the disappearance of his wife Lila. Egocentric and openly antagonistic, Nile is your archetypal big business alpha male, a passive aggressive nightmare of a figure who is at best a borderline sociopath, and yet whose confidence Aggie seems to win.
Of course, the thing about sociopaths is that they normally only work toward their own ends, and when Nile suggests to Aggie he’d be a much better topic for her next work the author suspects she’s perhaps already being manipulated. How could the inquisitive mind refuse such an offer, not least of all for the opportunity to settle the mystery of Niles’ missing spouse.
There’s a bit of a signpost early in The Beast In Me in that Aggie’s abandoned work is about the unlikely friendship between former US Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia. While Aggie and Niles’ bond seems equally us unlikely, it is also predicated on the notion that Niles is manipulating everyone around him, and while those closest to him all seem entirely aware of this it perhaps speaks to the times we find ourselves living in that the loudest, most confident and most aggressive voice in the room often engenders the most loyalty, and almost always gets what it wants.
Across eight episodes creator Gabe Rotter and his writing team of Erika Sheffer and Daniel Pearle tease out tension and build palpable suspense, propelling the story at pace even though the plot is almost entirely dialogue driven, with nary a shoot-out or car chase in sight. Of course a project like this will live or die by measure of how compelling it’s cast prove, and fortunately we are are in safe hands across the board.
I’ll admit I’d almost forgotten Claire Danes existed as an actor, and in lieu of having never watched Homeland the last thing I saw her in was, remarkably, Terminator 3. More fool me for not having paid attention to her body of work, because she’s brilliant here, teetering between intellectual titan and vulnerable emotional wreck, frequently embodying both within the same scene. I’d argue that by episode eight the emotional weight wears a little thin, but that’s on account of the script and a completely separate concern from Danes’ performance. If there’s not an awards nomination in her near future you can colour me surprised.
I was also blown away by Matthew Rhys, whose prior work has completely evaded me and upon whom I think I may never have previously clapped eyes; hell, I didn’t even know he was Welsh! In the best possible way Rhys is horribly convincing as a spoiled, self-serving psychopath, and one suspects those closest to him in his personal life might be asking difficult questions on account of how well he’s embodied such a fundamentally broken man.
The supporting cast, including Brittany Snow (who is surely overdue her own shot at a Wiggs-level role), Jonathan Banks, Hettienne Park and David Lyons all do a great job orbiting the gravitational pull of the two central characters, though I might have liked to spend a little more time getting to know them all and their motivations a little better. Still, with two such excellent performances at the core it’s very much a case of no harm, no foul.
If I do have a grievance with The Beast In Me it’s that the final episode feels rushed and perhaps a little anti-climatic, albeit relatively speaking. In part I suspect this is because the script for the final episode was kept from the cast ahead of filming, the merits of which decision I’d question for a number of reasons, not least that it could be interpreted as a lack of faith in the central players. Nonetheless this is a compelling, well written, self-contained series that largely delivers on its promise, and the like of which I’d really like to see more; proof, if proof were needed, that an audience can forgive many smaller indiscretions when the writing and performances are this good.
You can file this one as being up there with Mare Of Easttown, and I don’t say that lightly.
Author: Ewan, Chester Store.
