It comes as a great surprise to learn that The Beast in Me is its creator, writer and executive producer Gabe Rotter’s first major work for the screen. Because it is, simply put, so very, very good. Even without two astonishing performances from the lead actors – Claire Danes and Matthew Rhys – the script, the sheer style and confidence of it all, would be things of beauty. But add what that pair are doing, and this clever, taut eight-part psychological thriller moves seamlessly into top-tier television.
Danes plays Aggie Wiggs (Rotter may still have some work to do honing his naming skills), a writer who made her name with a book about her troubled relationship with her father. She is currently stuck on her next book, about the friendship between supreme court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and her fellow judge but polar political opposite Antonin Scalia, not least because she is grieving the eight-year-old son she and her now ex-wife Shelley (Natalie Morales) lost to a drunk driver four years earlier. The driver, a young man called Teddy, who lives locally and frequent sightings of whom negate any chance of peace for Aggie, managed to delay a breathalyser test at the time and avoid being charged with the boy’s death. Aggie lives alone with her rage and grief in the large, empty house that was supposed to overflow with family.
