Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Dustin Rowles | TV | November 14, 2025
Netflix’s The Beast In Me, which stars Claire Danes (reteaming with her Homeland showrunner Howard Gordon) and Matthew Rhys, is just preposterous enough to be addictively entertaining, but not so preposterous that it careens off the rails. It gets close a few times, but whenever the series clings from a cliff with one finger, Danes or Rhys manage to yank The Beast In Me back onto stable ground. It wobbles on the tightrope without ever losing its balance.
All of which is to say: The Beast In Me is good. It’s gripping television and, like All Her Fault, the mystery is far better than I expected. The twists surprise without straining credibility. Be warned, though, there is a lot of Claire Danes cry-face, but it’s more than offset by Rhys’ raging asshole of a character, a man who leans into sociopathy while still managing to be oddly compelling.
Danes plays Aggie Wiggs, an uptight, celebrated novelist struggling with her long-awaited follow-up until Nile Jarvis (Rhys) moves into the neighborhood with his new wife, Nina (Brittany Snow). Jarvis and his father, Martin (Jonathan Banks), are real-estate titans looking to expand their empire. Jarvis’ former wife disappeared two years earlier. Although the death was ruled a suicide, nearly everyone outside his immediate orbit is convinced he was responsible. Aggie, grieving the loss of her own son, is both repelled by Jarvis and drawn to him. She decides, with his cooperation, to write a book about him and his wife’s disappearance. She suspects him, but she’s open to the possibility that he can change her mind.
Aggie’s closest source is an FBI agent, Brian Abbot (David Lyons), who remains convinced that Jarvis not only killed his wife but may have committed other crimes along the way. He feeds Aggie information while she digs up details that might actually help prove Jarvis innocent. Aggie’s ex-wife Shelley (Natalie Morales) and Brittany Snow’s character lurk around, waiting to be threaded into the plot.
The first half of the series plays like a character study. Jarvis is rich, entitled, and awful, yet whether he murdered his wife stays blurry enough to keep the tension sharp. About midway through, though, the show makes a shift. It’s the kind of pivot that could wreck a lesser series, but The Beast In Me uses it to push from mystery into full suspense. Better still, the mystery keeps a few nasty surprises hidden for the final stretch.
I wouldn’t call the series fun exactly. Claire Danes in hysterics tends to smother any sense of levity. But her spiraling energy is necessary to ground an otherwise deranged Matthew Rhys performance. Together, they keep the story from tipping into absurdity. But just barely.
By the end, The Beast In Me is a satisfying, compulsive watch. It’s messy in moments, but it’s also riveting, tense, and anchored by two actors who know exactly how far to push their characters without breaking the spell. But just barely.
