The Beast in Me is a totally ridiculous show that does not seem so at first. You might start out thinking it’s a prestige psychological thriller: Claire Danes plays a Pulitzer-winning writer named Aggie Wiggs who is neck-deep in grief, writer’s block, and upkeep costs for the elaborate Long Island manse she bought with her book money; Matthew Rhys is Nile Jarvis, the real-estate scion who moves in next door to Wiggs and who may or may not have killed his wife. The two characters meet, something like chemistry sizzles between them (non-romantic, because she isn’t attracted to men), and things get oh so very complicated and interesting. And then Jonathan Banks shows up at the top of the third episode in a scene that instantly rearranges the show’s DNA.

We open on Banks’s Martin Jarvis in

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