The Beauty Reviews - Metacritic (original) (raw)
SummaryFBI Agents Cooper Madsen (Evan Peters) and Jordan Bennett (Rebecca Hall) investigate a series of model deaths in France. Their investigation uncovers a sexually transmitted virus and leads them to a billionaire known as "The Corporation" (Ashton Kutcher), who has created a miracle drug called "The Beauty" in the Ryan Murphy and Matthew Hodgson th... Read More
Season 1 Premiere:
Jan 21, 2026
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58% Positive
19 Reviews
33% Mixed
11 Reviews
9% Negative
3 Reviews
Jan 21, 2026
The Beauty is an opulent spectacle that is so profoundly addictive and completely captivating that it is, without a doubt, Ryan Murphy's best project to date.
Jan 23, 2026
Ryan Murphy’s deliciously demented new series zips past “The Substance” to deliver its own serial-killing take on body horror. It’s a dose of fresh hell for the Ozempic era.
66% Positive
25 Ratings
16% Mixed
6 Ratings
18% Negative
7 Ratings
Feb 21, 2026
I didn't read the comic and don't intend to do so. However I watched and rewatched every episode of the show and it's fantastic. The show is not about people becoming beautiful, although there is quite a lot about that on the surface, it is about revealing the idealized self. That's how we end up with Antonio still scarred on his left eye, Clara revealed as beautiful woman, and so on. The way the show handles the virus is also quite telling that unlike Pluribus, there is no magical transmission: it's body fluids and the authorities are on the case from the moment an anomaly has been detected. Just for these two points I give this show 20 out of 10. If we add the casting, the acting, the music, the photography I could add even more points. It's just fantastic. I love it!
Jan 23, 2026
Great acting and directing. The story sounded cheap from the trailers but it's actually addicting. Evan Peters is really incredible. Good old Ryan Murphy!
Jan 21, 2026
The Beauty puts all of its ideas on the surface of the story, leaving little room for interpretation or ambiguity. But it’s so entertaining—and feels so timely without being a doomy drag—that it seems uncharitable to complain that it isn’t a masterpiece.
May 4, 2026
For a while, watching the highlights are worth sitting through the lowlights. How many other shows can have an Emmy winner (Peters, so great on Mare of Easttown) casually deliver a line like, "an assistant editor at Vogue combusted in the Condé Nast cafeteria today"? But even in the early going, Murphy, Hodgson, and company struggle to find a narrative focus, and they let the story completely unravel by the end.
Jan 21, 2026
The Beauty’s flamboyant approach to that Ozempic-meets-HIV premise is impossible to forget and is also, for better and for worse, some of the most stimulating work out of the Murphy machine in years.
Jan 23, 2026
“The Beauty” merely reinforces Murphy’s distasteful infatuation with mixing nudity, violence and (several times) nude violence—a sort of Reese’s peanut butter cup that puts lurid taste treats together.
Jan 21, 2026
The production design and color palette are simultaneously ostentatious and bland, and rather than keeping the virus’s origins mysterious and focusing instead on its societal implications, the series lays out a rudimentary global conspiracy. .... The characters, when they’re not cliché-ridden blank slates, are universally reprehensible, and neither psychologically complex nor funny enough to sustain our interest.
Feb 9, 2026
That’s model Bella Hadid in the photo that accompanies this review. She opens the series playing a model who demonstrates the deadly results of a new drug that makes the recipient young and beautiful. It’s great while it lasts, but ends up with the person exploding…literally. If it sounds a bit outrageous, consider that it’s from the creative cranium of Ryan Murphy. Like the graphics that announce each glam city in large type, this series takes big swings in concept and execution. Being that it’s Murphy, you can expect outrageous moments, intense violence, hot sex and plenty of shirtless buff men. There is also a plot or two: Evan Peters plays the FBI agent trying to find the source of this potential plague, Anthony Ramos is the charmingly evil contract killer stamping out unwanted patients and Ashton Kutcher turns out to be the baddest. The series makes wild wicked fun at the current obsession with looks and is Murphy at his sensationalist best. (Review based on 4 out of 11 one-hour eps)
Mar 15, 2026
Just another dumb and derivative Ryan Murphy series obsessed with morbid content and mid shock value. This is the ugly and evil baby of 'The Substance,' 'Black Mirror,' 'The X-Files,' and 'The Neon Demon.'
Production Company:
- 20th Television
- Ryan Murphy Television
Initial Release Date:Jan 21, 2026
Number of seasons:1 Season
Rating:TV-MA
Astra Television Awards
• 1 Nomination