Danes plays a grumpy author whose grief over the death of her son is exacerbated by a new neighbour – who may or may not be a murderer
You know how it is with dramas about successful-but-grumpy lesbian authors in peril – you wait ages for one and then two turn up at once. Apple TV’s Pluribus (grumpy lesbian author deals with alien planetary takeover) is already a hit. How will Netflix’s eight-episode The Beast in Me (grumpy lesbian author deals with possibly murderous neighbour) compare?
Claire Danes plays Aggie Wiggs, a prize-winning writer still reeling from the death of her eight-year-old son in a car accident four years ago. She’s filled with grief and rage and has to endure seeing Teddy Fenig, the young driver she blames for her child’s death, walking free around town.
Aggie lives with her dog, Steve, in a huge mansion in an exclusive enclave in New York State. When property developer Nile Jarvis (Matthew Rhys) moves in next door, he instantly irritates Aggie with his proposal to build a jogging path through communal woods. But that’s not the only reason he’s an unwelcome neighbour. He was once questioned by police over the mysterious disappearance of his wife, whose body was never found.
Nile – now married to perky young blonde Nina (Brittany Snow) – is imperious, arrogant and peppers his conversation with casual insults. But when he persuades Aggie to let him buy her lunch, they hit it off in a weird, frenemy sort of way. He tells her that the worthy book she’s working on – coincidentally about the friendship between two very different people – sounds boring. “People want gossip and carnage,” he tells her, and suggests she write about him.
Aggie is actually intrigued by this “a**hole”, despite the fact that a drunken FBI agent who investigated the disappearance of Nile’s first wife warns her to stay away from him. But then Teddy Fenig disappears. And Aggie remembers that she told Nile that she wanted Fenig to suffer.
It is Danes and Rhys, both Emmy winners – Danes for Homeland and Temple Grandin, Rhys for The Americans – that keep this fairly generic psychological thriller afloat. Danes is a terrific actor and I’d happily watch an entire episode of Aggie just glumly padding around her neighbourhood in her slippers while chuffing on a ciggie.
Rhys is good value, too, carefully treading the thin line between entertaining obnoxiousness and pantomime villainy. The best scenes are those in which it’s just the pair of them, warily circling each other; their lunch in the first episode is riveting.
But other aspects of the series are disappointing. Danes was originally sent the script for the pilot five years ago by her friend and mentor Jodie Foster, who is one of the producers. The show seems to have been in development ever since (not normally a good sign) – and it shows.
Plot strands struggle against each other like ferrets in a sack, dissipating what little suspense is built up. Something is going on with Nile’s new wife – but it’s telegraphed from the moment we first meet her. There’s a distracting subplot about a controversial property project that Nile is involved in. His father (Jonathan Banks from Breaking Bad) seems like a wrong ‘un. And that FBI agent keeps turning up like a bad penny.
On top of all this, Aggie’s plumbing is playing up, with sewage spewing into her bath and sink. Is this a significant plot point or a metaphor? There are also some wincingly cheesy moments. For example, when Aggie is staring at a photograph of Nile, it dissolves into her own face. Hey, maybe these two aren’t so very different – get it?
Some viewers who start this will find themselves sufficiently invested to see it through to the end. But there will certainly be others – like me – who think The Beast In Me should have been put out of its misery long before it made it to Netflix.
‘The Beast in Me’ is streaming on Netflix
