The Beast in Me

 The Beast in Me is suspense thriller mini-series (eight episodes) on Netflix that is accomplished enough that you can watch 2 or three episodes in a row without tiring of the thing.  Most mini-series are repetitive and, because designed to be consumed an episode at a time, are repetitive, overly explicit as to plot points, and crammed with filler -- generally three or, even, four episodes too long in an 8-part mini-series.  This is not the case with The Beast in Me (2025), a show that is lean enough to be rewarding when watched a couple shows at a time.  Only one episode, an extended series of flashbacks providing backstory as the seventh episode seemed superfluous -- that show spells out subtexts that an alert viewer has already figured-out and feels, just a wee bit, like padding before the program's finale.  

The Beast in Me (2025) alludes to Trump's career as a Manhattan real estate developer, features a stand-in for Donald's grim father, Fred, in the form of the wonderful character actor Jonathan Banks who plays a variant on the omni-competent enforcer qua grandfatherly hoodlum, that is Mike Ehrmantraut in Better Call Saul;  there's a community organizer and alderwoman who stands in for Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez and agents provocateur at protests, and an FBI that seems cheerfully corrupt.  This colorful stuff is all background to a hard-edged duel between a female author, the Pulitzer prize-winning Aggie Wiggs (Claire Danes) and a billionaire property developer, Niles Jarvis (the show's surrogate for Trump) who is widely reputed to have killed his first wife and got away with murder.  Jarvis lives next door to Aggie in an exclusive neighborhood on Long Island called Oyster Bay.  Aggie has an enormous empty mansion, a  hunted house as it were that is exploited for various chases, jump-scares, and long, lonely corridors pulsing with sinister shadows.  As in most shows of this sort, Aggie comes equipped with trauma --  her bratty eight-year old son was killed in a car crash for which Aggie is partly responsible.  The crash and resulting grief have made Aggie haggard and hollowed her out except for a core rotting with rage against the drunk driver, a teenage boy.  Aggie has mercilessly harassed the kid, criminal activity that makes her a chief suspect when the kid turns up dead, wrapped in clear plastic like a choice piece of meat, and tucked into a corner in her dead child's bedroom.  Aggie is proudly lesbian and has an aggrieved ex-wife who is in the art business and runs a gallery.  The sinister plutocrat, Niles Jarvis has built a jogging trail connecting some of the property through woods in the neighborhood.  He wants all the neighbors to agree to easements through the woods so the jogging path can be paved and rendered operable.  Everyone is intimidated by Niles and agrees except for Aggie who doesn't want the woods desecrated.  This sets up a couple of hostile encounters with the oligarch.  Jarvis admires Aggie's writing and, after some tense jockeying for position, agrees to Aggie writing his biography.  In the course of writing and researching the biography, Aggie interviews various witnesses about the mysterious disappearance of Nile's first wife, Madison.  On the basis of various clues, Aggie concludes that Niles did, in fact, murder Madison.  Niles discovers that Aggie knows that he killed Madison and has proof in the form of a suicide note opportunistically used to imply that the woman has killed herself.  Complicating the situation are several subplots -- an FBI agent is obsessed with proving Niles' guilt; he is having an affair with a fellow agent also tangled up in the nefarious activities of the Jarvis family; the AOC lookalike clashes with Jarvis and his formidable father about a big development project that will gut a working class neighborhood.  Further, Niles Jarvis, acting on Aggie's expressions of rage about the drunken teenager, abducts the boy, leaves a spurious suicide note, and keeps the kid in some hidden location (possibly a storage locker) where the boy is half-naked, fettered, and seemingly periodically tortured by the villain.  Jarvis has a bad temper and a propensity to beat his victims to death with blunt objects -- it becomes increasingly obvious that the villain did, in fact, kill Madison; he has apparently killed others.  When Niles Jarvis figures out that Aggie has evidence proving he killed Madison, his first wife, the writer becomes his target and, of course, he tries to intimidate her into silence, frame her for murder, and, otherwise, attempts to destroy her.  Jarvis has a "Stepford Wives" spouse with a typical over-made-up and botox-stretched Mar-a-Largo face.  She befriends Aggie and, slowly discovers herself, that Jarvis is a psychopathic killer.  This sets up a climax in which Aggie is suspected of murder and has to flee a dragnet that is closing in on her; at the same time, Jarvis' wife who is pregnant, understands that, for the sake of the unborn child, she must detach herself from the vicious  oligarch. Jarvis goes to prison and Aggie, who still admires his chutzpah and intelligence, visits him in the hoosegow, gathering additional materials that she incorporates into another bestseller.

There's a lot of stuff in the teleplay but it's all intelligently deployed and well-organized.  Until the last episode, the plot is mostly plausible -- some suspension of disbelief is required near the end, but his is acceptable.  Claire Danes is gaunt, unattractive, and seems perpetually harassed -- but she gets a scene in the middle of the show in which she parties with Jarvis, ends up very drunk, and some sparks of attraction flash between her and the villain.  This is an excellent scene that humanizes both of these rather stylized and schematic characters.  Matthew Rhys is suave, charismatic, and sinister in the role of the villain.  All of the supporting characters are imagined with great intelligence and are persuasive in their roles, including the bug-eyed figure who mimics Ocasio-Cortez and ends up as prone to corruption as everyone else in the cast.  The set design, lavishly decorated million dollar condominiums, Manhattan art galleries and huge buildings under construction.  A signal that the set design will be voluptuous and rhetorically exact occurs in an early scene.  Aggie Wiggs is urinating in her bathroom.  She gets up from the toilet and an overhead shot depicts a puddle of urine in the bowl -- a nice touch, I thought.