Shows Like
Shows Like The Beast in Me: Grief, Obsession and Bad Neighbors
By Jordan A. · · 6 min read
Aggie Wiggs is a writer who has stopped writing, and then a man moves in next door who might have killed his wife. That's the whole hook of The Beast in Me, and the reason it works is that Claire Danes plays Aggie less like an investigator and more like an addict who has finally found her drug again.
Netflix put out eight episodes, they did fine, and then the Emmy nominations landed in July and the whole thing got a second life. It's up for Outstanding Limited or Anthology Series, and both Danes and Matthew Rhys are nominated individually. Limited series create the worst kind of hangover, though. There's no season two coming. So here's where to go next, sorted by what you actually responded to.
Why this one lands when so many don't
Gabe Rotter created it, Howard Gordon runs it, and Gordon's fingerprints (Homeland, 24) are all over the structure: short episodes, a reveal every forty minutes, and a central relationship that keeps flipping who has the power. Rhys plays Nile Jarvis, a real estate mogul, with a smile that never reaches anything. Jonathan Banks plays his father. When the two of them are in a room, the show barely needs a plot.
The other smart choice is that it's about the appetite for other people's tragedy without ever quite becoming the thing it's criticizing. Variety and THR both reached for The Jinx when it came out, and that comparison is fair in the best way.
If you came for Claire Danes
Homeland is the obvious one and the first three seasons are still extraordinary television. Carrie Mathison is the prototype for Aggie: brilliant, unwell, and correct at the worst possible times. The show sags badly in the middle years. Season eight brings it home better than it had any right to.
Fleishman Is in Trouble is the one people forget, and it's the closest thing to Aggie's interior life. Danes spends most of the series offscreen as a woman who has vanished, and then episode seven hands her the floor and she rewrites everything you've watched. It's the best single hour of her career after Homeland's "Q&A."
And if you want the origin, My So-Called Life is nineteen episodes from 1994 that shaped every teen drama since. Different register entirely. Same nervous, live-wire quality.
If you came for Matthew Rhys being charming and dangerous
The Americans is the ceiling. Six seasons of Philip and Elizabeth Jennings running Soviet intelligence out of a suburban travel agency while their marriage becomes a real one. Rhys does more with a flinch than most actors do with a monologue, and the finale is one of the two or three best in TV history.
Perry Mason on HBO is grimier and stranger than the old show, with Rhys as a broken 1930s investigator in a Los Angeles that's rotting from the money up. Two seasons.
He's also, bizarrely, nominated this year in comedy for Apple TV's Widow's Bay, where he plays a small-town mayor with a monster problem. Nothing about it resembles The Beast in Me, which is sort of the point of watching it.
Two-handers where the mouse is smarter than you think
The Undoing puts Nicole Kidman and Hugh Grant in the same trap: a wife slowly rebuilding her picture of her husband. Grant weaponizing his own charm is the whole show. Six episodes, one ending you'll argue about.
Presumed Innocent on Apple TV gives Jake Gyllenhaal a prosecutor accused of murdering a colleague, and it's much pulpier than The Beast in Me while pulling the same trick of making you distrust your own sympathy.
Task is Brad Ingelsby's follow-up to Mare of Easttown, with Mark Ruffalo running an FBI unit against Tom Pelphrey's crew of robbers. Two men who would like to be good, circling. If you liked that Aggie and Nile keep almost talking honestly, this is the show for you.
Black Rabbit has Jude Law and Jason Bateman as brothers destroying each other over a New York restaurant. It's messier than the others here and Bateman is having a fantastic time.
True crime adjacent, without the smell of the crime scene
Mare of Easttown remains the standard for grief-plus-procedure, and Kate Winslet's performance is all posture and exhaustion. Under the Banner of Heaven uses Andrew Garfield's faith against him as a murder investigation unravels a community. The Jinx is the actual documentary that everyone name-checks when they talk about this show, and the last two minutes of season one are still the most shocking thing HBO has aired.
Netflix clearly knows this appetite isn't going anywhere. The Idaho Murders documentary was the platform's most-watched English-language title in early August. If you'd rather stay in fiction, our Mindhunter follow-ups stay on the psychological side of the line.
Grief with a thriller engine
The Leftovers is the one to save. Three seasons about people who lost someone and cannot stop being people who lost someone, and it's funnier than that sounds. Season two is close to flawless.
Sharp Objects gives you Amy Adams returning to a Missouri town that ruined her, told in fragments and heat. Eight episodes and it never rushes. Ozark takes the same idea about a family metabolizing violence and turns it into four seasons of escalating consequences, if you want something with more plot per hour.
The rest of the 2026 limited series field
The Beast in Me is up against All Her Fault on Peacock, Beef's second season on Netflix, DTF St. Louis on HBO Max and Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette on Hulu. Beef is the one I'd watch first if you haven't; the second season swaps in Oscar Isaac and Carey Mulligan as feuding millennials and the road-rage premise still works. The full nominations list is worth a scan before the ceremony on September 14.
Where to stream everything
The Beast in Me, Black Rabbit, Ozark and Beef are on Netflix. Perry Mason, The Undoing, Mare of Easttown, Task, The Leftovers, Sharp Objects and The Jinx are on HBO Max. The Americans, Fleishman Is in Trouble and Under the Banner of Heaven are on Hulu, Homeland sits with Paramount+, and Presumed Innocent is on Apple TV. That's five services, which is roughly four more than anyone wants.
More in this lane: the best thriller shows of 2026 and why limited series took over television.
If you'd rather not keep a list like this in your head, hand it to BingeNext's TV recommendation engine. Tell it The Beast in Me hit, name one other show you loved, and it'll rank what's worth your next eight hours across the services you actually pay for.
Topics covered: the beast in me, netflix, psychological thriller, claire danes, limited series
About the author
Jordan A., Founder, BingeNext
Jordan A. is the founder of BingeNext and writes every guide on this site. He built the recommendation engine after one too many nights lost to the streaming menu, and he still tests every pick the hard way: by watching it.