Of all the mysteries in the Netflix thriller “The Beast in Me,” the least suspenseful is its source of inspiration. The limited series co-stars Matthew Rhys as Nile Jarvis, a reclusive New York real estate heir widely suspected of murdering his first wife who decides to unburden himself to a suspicious interlocutor. Nile’s conversation partner is a writer, not a filmmaker, but scrubbed of proper nouns, this synopsis is more or less identical to that of “The Jinx,” the 2015 docuseries that made now-convicted killer Robert Durst a household name.
Most of the invention in “The Beast in Me,” which was created by novelist Gabe Rotter (the “X-Files” revival) and showrun by Howard Gordon (“Homeland”), is reserved for Nile’s interviewer. Claire Danes is one of few actors with a TV résumé as long and decorated as Rhys’, and their pairing positions “The Beast in Me” as an equally matched intellectual duel. But it’s Danes, not Rhys, who serves as an executive producer on the show, and whose character is its true center. (Conan O’Brien and Jodie Foster are also executive producers, though neither star appears on screen.) Agatha “Aggie” Wiggs is an author living in the shadow of her own Pulitzer-winning success, holed up in a charming-but-crumbling pile of a Long Island house left empty by the collapse of her family a few years earlier. Trapped in a prison of her own grief while struggling in vain to produce a follow-up to her hit memoir, Aggie is mired in debt and stuck in a rut — until Nile moves in next door and offers her an intriguing new subject.
Rooting “The Beast in Me” in Aggie’s perspective means that, while the series is absorbingly paced and makes full use of the lead actors’ talents, it’s also lopsided as a character study. There’s a certain logic to this choice of focus, beyond Danes’ behind-the-scenes involvement: our collective fascination with suspected serial killers leaves more room to shade in the less fetishized party. But that choice, which leaves Nile more hazy and less defined than his real-life analog, also comes with trade-offs. The very selling point of putting Danes and Rhys in a “The Journalist and the Murderer”-type scenario — the prospect of two live-wire performers on opposite sides of the table and the electric, unpredictable chemistry that might ensue — is also the most disappointing aspect of the show, because there’s such a clear precedent to compare it to.
Even if “The Beast in Me” doesn’t have official source material, the show seems to understand its own adjacency to true crime; producing director Antonio Campos previously spearheaded the scripted adaptation of “The Staircase.” But it’s that same adjacency that brings up memories of Durst’s strange, meandering conversations with “The Jinx” creator Andrew Jarecki, hours of tape that gave a true eccentric enough rope with which to hang himself. (Durst was convicted of murder in 2021, partly on the strength of evidence uncovered by “The Jinx,” and died in prison in 2022.) Rhys’ Nile is disturbingly intense, yet can’t match the sheer oddity that made Durst both so compelling to watch and so believable as a killer. Rather than getting to the root of what makes Nile tick, “The Beast in Me” positions him as a foil to Aggie and a catalyst for her development. These are workmanlike tasks, done well but aiming well below the transcendence of other duets between psychopaths and their pursuers, both scripted and not: Clarice and Hannibal, Eve and Villanelle or — yes — Jarecki and Durst.
“The Beast in Me” fills itself out with enough plot to propel a satisfying binge, and provide the momentum that might otherwise come from the friction between Aggie and Nile. Aggie and her ex-wife Shelley (Natalie Morales), a painter, split up after their 8-year-old son died in a car accident. The writer tries to throw herself into a book about the unlikely friendship between Supreme Court justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia, but finds herself distracted by backed-up pipes and barking dogs. (Production designer Loren Weeks outfits the Oyster Bay home in enviable amounts of packed bookshelves and richly patterned wallpaper, making the space a highly attractive cocoon.) The latter belong to her new neighbor Nile, so Aggie’s already primed to dislike him when an FBI agent named Brian (David Lyons) bangs on her back door and tells her to stay away. “He’s not like us,” Brian warns, and Aggie soon has reason to believe him. The day after she and Nile first have lunch, the likely-drunk driver who may have caused the fateful crash goes missing, leaving a seeming suicide note but no body — just like Nile’s first wife.
As the off-the-books investigation motivates Aggie, Nile has his own reasons to try and clear his name. An AOC-esque city councilwoman (Aleyse Shannon) is drumming up popular opposition to Jarvis Yards, the legacy-cementing megadevelopment Nile co-leads with his father Martin (Jonathan Banks, well-cast as a scowling authority figure but poorly cast as the kind of guy who would willingly spend thousands of dollars on a bottle of wine). Nile hopes Aggie’s work-in-progress can help remake a murderous image that’s not helping his political problem, and recruits his second wife Nina (Brittany Snow) to help charm her into buying his side of the story.
Though Aggie is surprised to find that Nile’s former in-laws (Bill Irwin and Kate Burton) completely buy that their mentally ill daughter took her own life, “The Beast in Me” never cultivates a great deal of tension around whether Nile is really someone to be scared of. Nor does the titular question of how much Aggie, who Nile claims shares his “bloodlust” by way of explaining why he’s drawn to her, has in common with her subject keep us on the edge of our seats. Instead, the central question and driving force is how Aggie and Brian will lure Nile out of the walled fortress afforded by wealth and into the trap of spilling his guts to a confessor. The pleasing sensation of watching disparate pieces slowly lock into place pays off like an extended procedural led by name-brand actors.
And what acting! Danes is so known for maximalist emotion that Carrie Mathison’s crying face is the lasting legacy of “Homeland.” She makes that expression once more in the first five minutes of “The Beast in Me,” which begins with a flashback to the collision that changed the course of Aggie’s life, and stays at a panicked fever pitch throughout. Aggie is drawn tight as a string, a state of mind emphasized by sound design that cranks up every slamming door and gurgling drain even before Nile shows up on the scene. Rhys and the writers may not build a cohesive psychological profile in illustrating Nile’s sociopathy, but he makes a gleeful Mephistopheles as he eggs Aggie on, encouraging her dark side. “The Beast in Me” can’t deliver the payoff of capturing an actual killer in more ways than one, but it can heighten the drama of the hunt. Fiction does have some advantages.
All episodes of “The Beast in Me” are now streaming on Netflix.