Claire Danes and Matthew Rhys in 'The Beast in Me.' Netflix Share on Facebook Share on X Google Preferred Share to Flipboard Show additional share options Share on LinkedIn Share on Pinterest Share on Reddit Share on Tumblr Share on Whats App Send an Email Print the Article Post a Comment Logo text If the past 30 years of TV had a face, one could argue that it belongs to Claire Danes and that it is almost certainly crying. Claire Danes Crying Face, crumpled creases of concern atop a quivery chin, has been deployed in the service of romantic desolation, professional desperation and several permutations of grief, loneliness and general unraveling. It is without parallel - though Elisabeth Moss Angry Face is a worthy corollary - and without equal, helping shows like My So-Called Life, Homeland and Fleishman Is in Trouble ascend the medium's pinnacle and justifying the existence of shows like The Essex Serpent and Full Circle, which, if you don't remember them, truly did exist. Related Stories TV Claire Danes and Matthew Rhys Do a Dangerous Dance in Propulsive 'Beast in Me' Trailer TV 'Murdaugh: Death in the Family' Review: Jason Clarke and Patricia Arquette in Hulu's Latest Persuasive, if Unrevealing, True Crime Offering The Beast in Me The Bottom Line More banal criminality among the Long Island elite? Yawn. Airdate: Thursday, November 13 (Netflix)Cast: Claire Danes, Matthew Rhys, Brittany Snow, Natalie MoralesCreator: Gabe Rotter The first shot of Netflix's new eight-part drama The Beast in Me is of Claire Danes Crying Face, an acknowledgement, I guess, that the distinctive visage has fierce devotees, but also a warning: The Beast in Me features a lot of Claire Danes Crying Face, more than I can imagine would possibly be fun to play, because the human experience is full of a panoply of emotions and faces and The Beast in Me is not. Despite a great cast, in which nobody is really doing bad work, The Beast in Me is an exercise in prestige television monotony: a thriller with no notable twists to speak of and a character study in which the insights into human nature don't go much deeper than - I'm paraphrasing here - "Even good people have beasts inside them and that's why we're fixated on the stories of monsters." Perhaps, title aside, inside of each of us there are actually TWO beasts - one who loves dramas about rich people committing murder or covering up murder in Long Island and one who hates dramas about rich people committing murder or covering up murder in Long Island. And if I ever had the first beast in me, he has been well and truly overfed, like Mr. Creosote in Monty Python's The Meaning of Life. Danes' Aggie Wiggs - a name more fun to say than anything in the show is to watch - is introduced in the aftermath of the car accident that killed her son, destroyed her marriage to Natalie Morales' Shelley and left her all alone in her very nice, very much in-need-of-repairs house in Nassau County. Five years after the accident, Aggie is in a rut. A wildly successful profile writer whose memoir about her con man father won the Pulitzer, Aggie is struggling to write her stupid-sounding follow-up book, much to the chagrin of her agent (Deirdre O'Connell's Carol). Her bills are past due. Her pipes are backed up with icky brown water. Everything is well-suited for Claire Danes Crying Face, or The Melancholy Danes. Any other face would be inappropriate. Enter Matthew Rhys' Nile Jarvis, a New York City real estate mogul making a wealthy retreat because everybody in Manhattan thinks he killed his first wife. They think this because he has Resting I Killed My First Wife Face, which isn't the same as Claire Danes Crying Face, though both end up over-represented in The Beast in Me. The creepy and intense Nile, who's a big fan of Aggie's book, wants to set up a jogging path through the forest behind or near or around his house (geography in this show is nonsense, but so is using "a jogging path" as a key plot point). It requires neighborhood approval. Aggie doesn't want to give her approval because she thinks Nile killed his first wife, though his new wife (Brittany Snow's Nina) seems friendly. Trying to win Aggie's signature, Nile takes her to lunch, where he's creepy and intense, but she's intrigued, because even good people have beasts inside of them and that's why we're fixated on monsters. Since she's a wildly successful profile writer, she proposes writing a book about him, because her current book project sounds really stupid. So yes, the plot of The Beast in Me is basically, "What if Robert Durst moved in next to Taffy Brodesser-Akner and she decided to write a book about him?" directed, in four of eight episodes, by Antonio Campos with a similar vibe - I'd call it "whimsical paranoia" - to what he brought to the first season of The Sinner. Soon, Aggie's interviewing Nile while also investigating or reinvestigating the murder he either did or didn't commit, which worries Nile's wealthy father Martin (Jonatha