Midway through The Beast in Me, Netflix’s entertainingly flawed saga of murder and longform journalism, comes a moment guaranteed to make the editors in the audience smile. Nile Jarvis, a menacing real estate developer played by Matthew Rhys, has recently snuck into the home of Aggie Wiggs (Claire Danes), the author writing his profile. Coming behind her subject, Aggie discovers not thievery but a manuscript full of notes. “The Beast and Me”? Try “in.” Et voilà! A middling “4” of a title is now a solid “9” or “10.” 

Netflix’s limited series is not quite an exploration of writing and revision. One could be forgiven, however, for noting how often the sociopathic Nile improves our heroine’s work. When viewers first meet Aggie, a neurotic scribbler of New Yorker dreck, she is struggling through a book-length tribute to Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s friendship. Oh, barf. Mere days later, the Pulitzer winner has set aside that pedantry in favor of a snazzier job. “You should write about me,” Nile remarks upon realizing that he and Aggie are new neighbors. Indeed, she should. The dramatic arc is much more compelling.