Agatha Gibbs, the journalist played by Claire Danes in Netflix’s new thriller series The Beast in Me, has a contract to write a book about the friendship between Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia. She’s struggling with this, her second book, and you think you understand why: Her only child died in a car accident four years ago, and she and her wife divorced in the aftermath. But when Aggie goes out for lunch with her wealthy new Oyster Bay neighbor, Nile Jarvis (Matthew Rhys), he quizzes her on the project, and is less than impressed. “It’s boring! No wonder you’re stuck!” he says. Aggie tries to defend her idea: “It’s two people with radically opposed worldviews, deeply polarized convictions, who still manage to have real affection—” Nile, played by Rhys as a magnetically rude man, mimics putting on a mask and breathing into it: “It’s a snooze! No one wants hope! You know that! People want gossip and carnage!”
And immediately, you know that Nile is right: This book idea sucks. You also know the parallels that the creators of The Beast in Me want you to draw: Aggie, a prize-winning writer with a Bushwick-dwelling artist ex-wife and bylines in the Atlantic and the New Yorker, is Ginsburg. Nile, a rapacious developer and a capitalist prone to declarations like “Selfish gets shit done” and “Humans have eyes in the front and sharp teeth … we are predators,” is Scalia. They may seem like opposites, but just as Ginsburg and Scalia were both creatures of the privilege the Supreme Court conveys, Aggie and Nile are both deeply marked by New York City—obsessed with prestige, in all its forms.
The two strike up the exact kind of relationship that Agatha Gibbs’ Ginsburg–Scalia book proposal would surely have termed an “unlikely friendship.” This affinity, the show insists, is founded on some kernel of similarity in their personalities. Aggie’s first book, which won her the Pulitzer, was a memoir about her dad, whom she calls a “con man.” Nile is convinced that Aggie still admires her father, and, by extension, a person like Nile, because they’re creative, resilient, and always win the day. The Beast in Me stretches the analogy, trying to see how far these two highly effective people could walk in parallel with one another. The idea that these characters would ever really be friends is helped along by the fact that Danes and Rhys are eating up these roles, reaching nuclear levels of mutually generated Gen X charisma in their scenes together.
Yes, Nile and Aggie have fun together—to a point. Seriously complicating this new friendship is the fact that Nile has been accused—never legally, but in the court of public opinion—of murdering his first wife, and after Aggie convinces him to become the subject of her next book, she becomes obsessed with the question of whether he did it. So the plot winds its way through cloak-and-dagger meetings with handsome, dissolute ex-FBI agent Brian Abbott (David Lyons), woods walks with Nile’s fresh-faced second wife Nina (Brittany Snow), and parlor chats with the family of Nile’s first wife, who firmly believe in his innocence.
This story, alas, is never as sharp as the characters, often bearing a distinctive whiff of standard-issue thriller, as when the characters break into one another’s houses to gather intel, or when Aggie is startled by a knock on the window in the middle of a thunderstorm. Even the setting—a wealthy enclave on Long Island—feels familiar, and this isn’t even the first “What happened to this rich guy’s first wife?” mystery show we’ve had from Netflix this year.
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But The Beast in Me is worth it for Danes and Rhys. Danes is an expert at conveying a character who is drawn tight with anxiety, and there’s plenty of that in here—Aggie is grieving and angry, and spends a lot of time pacing, drinking, or holding back tears, wobbling her chin. But when she is wearing her journalist hat, Danes’ Aggie flips a switch, beaming concern and empathy toward her subjects. The plot plays with some light Journalist and the Murderer–style critique of Aggie’s motivations and methods—why would she profile this man, Nile’s family wonders, if not to pin that murder on him? How could her book be any good if he’s innocent? And the dual-faced nature of Aggie’s affect does make you wonder—but not for long, because the story will inevitably bring things to a boiling point that will make whatever light treason Aggie commits, as a writer thirsting for a story, pale in comparison to Nile’s sins.
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If the twists and turns come to seem a little bit predictable around Episode 5 of this eight-episode miniseries, at least you can always look forward to Aggie’s interplay with Rhys’ plain-spoken, forceful Nile. Nile, a wealthy Hobbesian who alternately quotes Buddhist philosophy and eats chicken off the bone in front of his salivating dogs, is the type of person who leverages his power to get you onside, then uses you relentlessly to reach his goals. When he’s carrying out the first part of this sequence with Aggie—helping her, in ways both legal and illegal—you’re suspicious, but also so deeply relieved this poor sad lady has found a champion that you find yourself liking him. When Aggie and Nile are drinking in her living room one night, Nile puts “Psycho Killer,” by the Talking Heads, on her record player, and dances to it, as they laugh. Aggie, holding a cigarette, groans, “I love smoking inside. It’s kind of like pissing your pants.” We know, as seasoned viewers of thrillers, that this friendship can’t last—but while it does, it’s far less snoozy than that of Ginsburg and Scalia.
