Only a few months after the debut of his critically panned show All’s Fair, creator Ryan Murphy has released a brand new series The Beauty. Not unironically, the cast is dazzling, with models Bella Hadid, Nicola Peltz Beckham and Amelia Gray Hamlin making guest-star appearances and Evan Peters and Rebecca Hall driving the story as the leads.
Peters and Hall star as FBI Agents Cooper Madsen and Jordan Bennett respectively, who are charged with leading the investigation into mysterious and gruesome deaths of international supermodels.
Co-created with American Horror Story’s Matthew Hodgson, the synopsis for Murphy’s new show reads: “In FX’s The Beauty, the world of high fashion turns dark when international supermodels begin dying in gruesome and mysterious ways. FBI Agents Cooper Madsen and Jordan Bennett are sent to Paris to uncover the truth.
“As they delve deeper into the case, they uncover a sexually transmitted virus that transforms ordinary people into visions of physical perfection, but with terrifying consequences.
“Their path leads them directly into the crosshairs of The Corporation (Ashton Kutcher), a shadowy tech billionaire who has secretly engineered a miracle drug dubbed ‘The Beauty’, who will do anything to protect his trillion-dollar empire – including unleashing his lethal enforcer, The Assassin (Anthony Ramos).
FX//Disney+
“As the epidemic spreads, Jeremy (Jeremy Pope), a desperate outsider, is caught in the chaos, searching for purpose as the agents race across Paris, Venice, Rome, and New York to stop a threat that could alter the future of humanity. The Beauty is a global thriller that asks: ‘What would you sacrifice for perfection?'”
Already, The Beauty is off to a better critical response than All’s Fair, sitting at 70% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 30 reviews at the time of writing.
Early reactions have widely compared the series to Coralie Fargeat’s critically acclaimed body horror The Substance – though not all comparisons have been praise-worthy. In fact, the series was dubbed “nearly unwatchable” by Metro.
FX//Disney+
Here’s what everyone’s saying about Murphy’s The Beauty:
“Ryan has claimed the series is a commentary on ‘Ozempic culture’ and the current obsession with drug-assisted, quick-fix physical transformation. Well, that’s one way of looking at it.
“Another way of looking at it is that it’s a schlocky, tonally uneven mess, a muddle of globetrotting thriller, body horror and the usual tiresome Murphy mix of high camp and low, cack-handed satire.”
“The Beauty satirises our world of Instagram perfection, tweakments and weight-loss jabs. This fictional wonder drug is a fat-busting cocktail administered by needle; when it reaches the market, it quickly becomes normalised. And so it is in real life.
“Cheekbones delivered via injectables are a lunchtime appointment away; who would have imagined, even a couple of years ago, that M&S would be selling a range of ‘nutrient-dense’ meals aimed at people on Ozempic and Mounjaro? The Beauty is a work of sci-fi, but only in the fine detail.”
FX//Disney+
“While there are definitely nods to the Coralie Fargeat film, The Beauty runs deeper than all that. Where The Substance focuses more on the effects of beauty culture on aging women, The Beauty casts a much wider net.
“This is excellent news for anyone hoping to watch a solid Ryan Murphy show once more. And it is indeed solid, from the writing and the acting, to the special effects and soundtrack (I’ll never listen to a Christopher Cross song again in the same way).”
“I expected nonsense. But I was not prepared for the endurance challenge that was soldiering through these 11 episodes.
“With the advent of supernova drugs like Ozempic and Mounjaro, plus the ongoing conversation around cosmetic injectables and Kris Jenner’s facelift, this could have been the perfect moment for a show about the ‘one shot that makes you hot’.
“But the result here is shameless claptrap.”
FX//Disney+
“The show’s genetic make-up is spliced from superior stock. There are traces of The Substance, Coralie Fargeat’s scathing body horror, in the grotesque physical metamorphoses and the commentary on our beauty obsession.
“The contagion element is pure It Follows, the elevated 2014 horror in which intimate contact passes on a deadly curse. Not that The Beauty is a patch on either of them.”
“This Disney+ series (on FX in the US) is yet another example of a streamer dumbing down its output. Every narrative beat gets announced twice for viewers potentially distracted by their phones.”
“Ryan Murphy’s last screen offering was the existentially terrible All’s Fair. It was critically panned… By that measure, Murphy’s new show is a triumph. The Beauty has a plot, structure, characters that often act, react and speak as real human beings might, a sense of what it’s doing and where it’s going and – whisper it – even a touch of commentary on the state of society today.
“In short, The Beauty is a return to bingeable Murphy goodness (and a harking back, subject-wise, to arguably some of his best work, Nip/Tuck).”
FX//Disney+
“Despite its mishaps and chaotic one-liners, The Beauty is a mostly enjoyable watch. Ranging from 24 to 50 minutes, the 11 episodes are highly engaging and digestible.
“It’s a series that dares to say a lot, while exploring the thrills of pretty privilege and the perils of beauty as a commodity, all amid the rise of GLP-1 use, social media addiction and a rampant lack of sexual education in America. Viewers will need to prepare themselves for this wild and imperfect journey, but they won’t walk away regretful.”
The Beauty is available to stream now on Disney+.
The new edition of Living Legends, celebrating music icon Dolly Parton, is here! Buy Dolly at 80 in newsagents or online, priced at just £8.99.
TV writer, Digital Spy Janet completed her Masters degree in Magazine Journalism in 2013 and has continued to grow professionally within the industry ever since. Â For six years she honed her analytical reviewing skills at the Good Housekeeping institute eventually becoming Acting Head of Food testing. Â She also freelanced in the field of film and TV journalism from 2013-2020, when she interviewed A-List stars such as Samuel L Jackson, Colin Firth and Scarlett Johansson. In 2021 she joined Digital Spy as TV writer where she gets to delve into more of what she loves, watching copious amounts of telly all in the name of work. Since taking on the role she has conducted red carpet interviews with the cast of Bridgerton, covered the BAFTAs and been interviewed by BBC Radio and London Live. In her spare time she also moonlights as a published author, the book Gothic Angel.
Â