The Beast in Me

The Beast in Me is a taut, character-driven Netflix psychological thriller created by veteran showrunner Howard Gordon, the writer-producer behind Homeland and 24. It pairs two of prestige television's most formidable performers: Claire Danes plays Aggie Wiggs, a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist who has retreated from the world, paralyzed by grief and writer's block in the aftermath of her young son's death. Her fragile isolation is disrupted when a new neighbor moves in next door.

That neighbor is Nile Jarvis, a swaggering, larger-than-life real-estate developer played by Matthew Rhys, a man who years earlier was the prime suspect in the disappearance of his first wife, though he was never charged. Rather than fear him, Aggie finds herself magnetically drawn to him, and her dormant instincts as a writer reawaken as she begins to investigate whether the charming man next door is a killer. What follows is an intimate, unnerving cat-and-mouse game in which it is never clear who is studying whom, or who is truly the more dangerous of the two.

Anchored by the crackling, adversarial chemistry between its two Emmy-winning leads, the series drew strong reviews as a slow-burn adult thriller of a kind streaming rarely delivers. Brittany Snow co-stars as Nile's wife, and the show keeps its psychological screws turning to the final episode. All eight episodes of The Beast in Me are streaming on Netflix.