‘The Beauty’ Review: Ryan Murphy Explores the Cost of Physical Perfection (Hulu)

In context, it might almost go unnoticed. A model—played by none other than Bella Hadid—storms down a runway with an unmistakably angry expression. The catwalk looks less like a fashion venue than a muddy road cutting through the countryside. She reaches the front row, snatches a bottle of water from a guest, and throws it straight in her face. Given the ever-growing theatricality of fashion shows, this could easily be part of the spectacle. But it isn’t. She grabs more bottles, panic spreads through the crowd, she starts attacking people, and before anyone can stop her, she steals a motorcycle, runs several people over, and sparks a citywide chase that ends in a tense, explosive standoff. What on earth is going on?

The narrative hook of The Beauty is sharp, aggressive, and eye-catching—exactly what streaming-era rules demand. Before long, however, the series settles into more familiar Ryan Murphy territory and introduces its true protagonists: two FBI agents involved in an intimate relationship that crosses professional boundaries. They are Agents Cooper Madsen (Evan Peters, a recurring presence in the American Horror Story creator’s universe) and Jordan Bennett (Rebecca Hall). As they struggle to define the limits of their relationship, they are assigned the model’s case. It doesn’t take long for them to discover that this wasn’t an isolated incident. Similar episodes have already occurred, involving people desperate for water, turning violent, and ultimately exploding—literally.

Rather than focusing on unraveling the mystery of what’s happening—something the series makes fairly clear early on—The Beauty centers on the various cases and characters orbiting a disturbing phenomenon linked to an experimental “product.” This substance instantly enhances physical beauty, but carries serious medium-term risks. Created by a shadowy figure known only as “the Corporation” (Ashton Kutcher), the drug was never meant to reach the market. Someone stole it, released it onto the streets, and now it circulates on the black market with unpredictable consequences. The first episode also zeroes in on one of these cases: an overweight young Black man, unlucky in everything, whose appearance is radically transformed by the treatment.

From France to Italy—while speaking impressively bad French and Italian—Peters’ character must navigate turf wars with other security agencies, a case that puts both agents at risk of infection (you don’t even need to undergo the procedure to be contaminated), a growing outbreak, and even a hired killer (Anthony Ramos) working for the Corporation, tasked with eliminating anyone trafficking in the unapproved product. These threads fuel a series that constantly oscillates between violent action and something closer to a human drama, focused on people who place overwhelming value on physical beauty and are willing to risk everything to achieve it.

In the Beverly Hills universe Murphy inhabits and engages with daily, this obsession is omnipresent—so much so that his first major series, Nip/Tuck, revolved around precisely this theme. As with The Substance, which also hinged on a similar beautifying and rejuvenating product with dangerous side effects, Murphy applies his familiar toolkit: heightened drama, long dialogue scenes packed with real-world references, a total lack of subtlety, and a number of sex scenes that are, supposedly, central to the transmission of both the product and the infection.

The metaphors are broad and plentiful. The Beauty is about obsession with appearance, yes, but also about viruses (AIDS, COVID), pharmaceutical labs, the rich and famous, and the fixation on money and power that consumes nearly all of its characters. As the investigation progresses, it becomes more complex but also repetitive, creating the sense that reaching the eleven episodes of the first season may prove somewhat exhausting. But that has always been Murphy’s way—co-writing many episodes, directing several himself, throwing everything into the mix, and rarely editing himself down. It feels like the only way he knows how to cope with juggling so many shows across multiple platforms.

With elements of horror—specifically body horror, as the transformations and their consequences are often genuinely unsettling—but ultimately operating, as is typical for Murphy, as a hybrid of multiple genres and tones, The Beauty falls short of being a great series, even as it tackles timely and immediately resonant themes. Within the prolific body of work of the creator of All’s Fair, 9-1-1, and anthology franchises like Monster, Feud, and the upcoming Love Story, this new series ranks among the more prestigious and carefully produced. That alone doesn’t make it the relevant drama it clearly aims to be, but at its best, it does manage to combine the pulp energy of Murphy’s most entertaining projects with an intermittently sharp critical view of the world it portrays.