the audio description properly disturbed me. There was a use of the word “concave” that has stuck with me.

The Beast In Me is a fun, dark game of cat and mouse, where the question is whether or not the cat is a cat, or if the cat can even be trusted. When a grieving author (Claire Danes) finds herself with a new neighbor (Matthew Rhys), who is someone with a missing wife that he may or may not have killed, she finds herself unwittingly pulled into his world. he is clearly a narcissist, someone who values power and money, and outsmarting everyone around him. That even extends to his father (Jonathan Banks), who reads just as shady as he does, but with age and experience to back it up. Brittany Snow plays Nina, the new wife who used to work for the old wife, and who takes her position in society seriously.

The show does have a tendency to meander away from its core story, showing an overinvestment in characters that bring little to the main dynamic between Danes and Rhys. For example, Brian (David Lyons) is an obsessive wreck of a human being, driven to prove that Rhys’s Nile Jarvis killed his wife Madison (Leila George). The payoff on the storyline should be with Danes’s Aggie, as he interacts primarily with her, but he serves as not much more than a catalyst for what she already knows, essentially speeding up her own understanding of Jarvis, and clouding it with his own preconceived notions. The payoff comes too late, and arguably serves as not much more than backstory regarding Madison, yet he pushes Aggie forward in a way that would have been a lot more fun to see her get there herself. this is, after all, cat and mouse, and the fun is in who has the upper hand. Aggie feels like she’s even more ill equipped, because her own sense of deduction is disrupted by Brian, and a continuing over reliance on an FBI plot.

Similarly, Jarvis is deeply invested in a real estate deal that isn’t going his way. It serves to show off his narcissistic god complex, his belief that he can handle or fix anything, even when he can’t, but really it tips the hat a bit too soon on whether or not the beast is in him. one of the interesting things the show dances around is Aggie’s grief involving the death of her son, and how she blames this one individual for killing him. It was an accident, so he walks free, and Aggie’s marriage was destroyed, and her son is gone.

If the series had balanced the beast part a bit more, and trusted in the intelligence of its audience, it would have been a tremendous series on its own, as we would have to wrestle with the idea of what makes a beast, and spending the season trying to figure out if Jarvis is what the public says, or if perhaps there’s a beast in Aggie. Instead, the shows charm and flair come from the lead performances of Danes and Rhys. Danes is excellent at being a hot mess at all times, someone who you can sympathize with, but someone whose perpetual grief exhausts even you. It should feel consuming, beyond a fault, so that the wordplay in the title could also apply to Danes. You’re not heartless if you feel like Aggie is a bit much, in fact, that is what should power the dynamic between author and subject. It has a feel like The Jinx, where a documentary crew sat down for one thing, and got something else entirely.

Rhys is just flat out terrifying in a few scenes, as his tendencies break past into psychopathic. Before the end, there’s no question as to who Jarvis is, answering the question earlier rather than later. I’d argue that a later reveal is more fun, but we also get to see so many shades of Matthew Rhys, it is hard to not love it on some level.

I did enjoy Banks and Snow as stand out performances in the supporting cast. Banks doesn’t offer much more than an experienced businessman who is morally flexible, and even his own son is a bit much for him. There’s also Snow, who is intentionally hard to read as to how much she knows, and when she knows it, but her character pays off in the final episode.

The audio description was terrific, the series is really good, and I’m definitely encouraging you to watch. I just am not fully sold on this being the best limited series of the year. the performances take it over the top, but the play between Danes and Rhys could ahve been even stronger.

Tight and twisty, The Beast In Me is likely enough to satisfy your appetite, buoyed by demanding and exemplary performances from Claire Danes and Matthew Rhys.

Fresh: 8.3/10