Created by Gabe Rotter – Starring Claire Danes, Matthew Rhys, Brittany Snow, Natalie Morales, and David Lyons
After a personal tragedy leaves acclaimed writer Aggie Wiggs struggling with grief and unable to write, controversial real estate developer Nile Jarvis moves into her neighborhood.
I wasn’t particularly excited about The Beast in Me based on the clips I had seen. Something about them made the show look a little campier and more over-the-top than I tend to enjoy.
Fortunately, the actual premiere is much better than I expected.
There’s an intensity to the episode that slowly builds around Nile (Matthew Rhys). The show gives us plenty of reasons to be suspicious of him but stops short of telling us exactly what to think. Nile has a reputation that precedes him, and Rhys plays into that uncertainty without simply turning him into a caricature. He’s blunt, aggressive, and completely comfortable saying things most people would keep to themselves.
The obvious question hanging over him is what happened to his first wife. Everyone seems to have already formed an opinion, and Nile knows exactly how people see him. What makes him interesting is that he doesn’t spend every moment desperately trying to convince people they’re wrong. He almost seems to have accepted the narrative surrounding him and learned how to use it.
Rhys makes Nile feel dangerous without giving us much concrete evidence that he actually is. That left me questioning how much of my reaction to him comes from what Nile does and how much comes from what I’ve already been told about him.
Aggie (Claire Danes) is almost his opposite. She’s still struggling with a tragedy that has left her angry, depressed, divorced, and unable to write. Much of what Nile lets out, Aggie seems determined to hold inside. Some of that contrast also seems connected to their respective places in the world and the different expectations placed upon them. Social constructs give Nile considerably more freedom to express his anger and disregard what other people think.
Danes is terrific at showing how much Aggie is carrying around without needing to constantly explain it. There’s an enormous amount of guilt mixed into her grief, enough that I started wondering whether I completely understand the tragedy that put her in this place.
The relationship between them is where the premiere really grabbed me. They begin in a fairly adversarial place, but Aggie gradually becomes intrigued by the way Nile moves through the world. He says things she wouldn’t say and confronts people in ways she doesn’t allow herself to.
She can be repelled by his behavior while also seeming a little fascinated by the freedom of it. She isn’t suddenly won over by him, but I could understand why this particular man might become interesting to her at this particular time in her life.
For a moment, it even seems like Nile might be convincing her to question the story everyone else has written about him. Then the final minutes of the premiere give Aggie a reason to reconsider everything she’s begun to think about her new neighbor.
That’s also what makes the parallels between these characters interesting. They’re both living in the aftermath of events that have come to define them and struggling with the stories surrounding those events. Nile seems determined to control his story, while Aggie appears trapped inside hers.
The Beast in Me gives us information without necessarily telling us which information we should trust, and Danes and Rhys make that ambiguity work. Even relatively simple conversations between them have an uncomfortable energy because I’m never entirely sure which one has correctly read the other.
I went into The Beast in Me expecting something much broader than this. Instead, I got a tense psychological mystery built around two complicated characters and enough ambiguity that I’m not sure who or what I should believe yet.
More importantly, I want to find out.
TV Verdict: I’m On Board
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