Just months after All’s Fair was dubbed a bin fire not worth the metaphorical celluloid it had been committed to, uber-producer Ryan Murphy is back at it.
This time the glossy froth is The Beauty. This eleven-parter revolves around an ‘injectable Instagram filter’ that transforms recipients into a glowed-up version of themselves, once they’ve endured a bone-cracking rebirth that involves a gloopy cocoon.
Except not everything that glitters is gold and this hot jab comes with some atrocious side effects, chief among them spontaneous human combustion.
This is the fate that befalls a rabid Bella Hadid in the Disney Plus melodrama’s opener. The real-life supermodel enacts some ‘catwalk carnage’ at Paris Fashion Week before going out with a bloody bang.
The crime scene sets in motion an international, globe-trotting investigation, as beautiful people start popping open like New Year’s fireworks.
Crack-team FBI agents Cooper Madsen (Murphy acolyte Evan Peters) and Jordan Bennett (Rebecca Hall) – who are partners in the interrogation room and the bedroom – take on the strange sequence of events and soon become implicated in them.
The duo learn that The Beauty (name of show and also serum) hits a two-year expiration date, for the recipient. And in just as bad news, it has mutated from the lab-grown version into a sexually transmitted virus, which is ‘more virulent than Ebola’. Since the carriers are a string of ravishing knock-outs, this is a bit of a pickle.
The show’s similarities to The Substance and Death Becomes Her have already been remarked upon, and Isabella Rosselini’s presence winks to the latter, but The Beauty is based on a 2015 comic book by Jeremy Haun and Jason A Hurle.
Having seen the trailer and read the list of guest stars – Meghan Trainor! Bella Hadid! Nicola Peltz Beckham! – 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.
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In some incredible misdirection from the marketing, Ashton Kutcher seldom shows up, despite having been billed as the lead. His megalomaniac, drug-pushing pharma boss only appears once you start to wonder if he’s in it at all.
Instead, we spend most of our time with the FBI agents, in turgid scenes Hall and Peters do their best to make sense of. There’s also a lot of Kutcher’s top assassin (Anthony Ramos) and his incel-turned-protegee Jeremy (first Jaquel Spivey, later Jeremy Pope). These scenes wildly vary in tone from one to the next, with jabs at humour, romance, body horror (if you’re squeamish, beware) and introspection on our modern beauty standards.
A list of executive producers longer than my arm is rarely a good sign, but it’s hard to tell whether the result here is accidental or intended.
Episodes vary from 20 minutes to 50 for no apparent reason. Huge needle drops are thrown on nothing scenes (thank you, Disney dollars). As characters succumb to The Beauty, they are swapped out for supple, young substitutions in what seems offensive to the actors and also disregards our expectation that this starry cast would actually be in this TV show.
The Beauty: Key details
Creators and writers
Ryan Murphy and Matthew Hodgson
Executive producers
Ryan Murphy, Matthew Hodgson, Evan Peters, Anthony Ramos, Jeremy Pope, Eric Kovtun, Scott Robertson, Nissa Diederich, Michael Uppendahl, Alexis Martin Woodall, Eric Gitter, Peter Schwerin and Jeremy Haun
Cast
Evan Peters, Anthony Ramos, Jeremy Pope, Ashton Kutcher and Rebecca Hall
Guest stars
Amelia Gray Hamlin, Ari Graynor, Bella Hadid, Ben Platt, Billy Eichner, Isabella Rossellini, Jaquel Spivey, Jessica Alexander, Jon Jon Briones, John Carroll Lynch, Julie Halston, Lux Pascal, Meghan Trainor, Nicola Peltz Beckham, Peter Gallagher and Vincent D’Onofrio
Run time
11 episodes
Release date
January 21
Where to streamin the UK
Disney Plus
If I felt anything watching these episodes, it was despair at their worldview. One scene pokes fun at career dieters, then another deems overweight people ‘unf***able’. Characters make bold speeches about embracing imperfections, but are then plagued with nightmares of facial deformity.
The message telegraphed between the lines is that fatness and age are to be feared, while conformity to beauty ideals is revelled in. It’s incredibly depressing.
Worst still, the whole thing is left on the type of cliffhanger that threatens more episodes might arrive.
The Beauty may have been in the can when the All’s Fair front hit, so nothing could be done to make it any better. Or, putting my tin foil hat on, it’s been created this way on purpose, as a way to hype up the show chatter in a sort of it’s-so-bad-you-have-to-see momentum.
Ryan Murphy, you can do better. And we deserve it.
Verdict
Proceed at your own peril.
The Beauty is available to stream on Disney Plus from today.
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