Telly Talk: Beauty And The Beast
Beastly good fun
Anyone else remember a fantasy drama in the late 1980s called Beauty And The Beast, starring Linda Hamilton off of Terminator and Ron Perlman – star of lots of excellent films? Ridiculous and utterly enchanting for a child to watch, she was a lovely district attorney and he was a sensitive lion man person, it was an everyday tale of vigilantes in the underbelly of New York putting wrongs right. Fast forward over 20 years and tune in to the reboot starring Smallville’s Kristin Kreuk as a kickass NYPD homicide detective – as kickass as you can be whilst also maintaining constantly beautful hair – and Jay Ryan (who played Jack Scully in Neighbours yonks ago) as a mysterious do-gooder with supernatural strength and more than a few secrets under his belt. Now, I know this is a reboot and not just another go at a popular title because – get this – the lead characters have exactly the same names. Who else would have noticed?
There’s a genre that’s being well-tapped at the moment, but has always proven popular – hence the three-year run of the original shaggy and pretty aka Beauty And The Beast. Current offerings include The Vampire Diaries, Twilight, Switched, Grimm, Moonlight, Misfits and repeats of Charmed. Boxsets of Buffy and Angel are still flying out of the shops, as is Tru Calling, Dollshouse and Dark Angel. You get my drift.
The thing is, if it’s good it doesn’t feel tired. This is quite good. It’s got a decent script, beautiful people who can actually do a bit of acting, and an opening episode that sets the scene and yet doesn’t drag in the execution of some quite key set-up points. You know how sometimes an episode’s own plot can suffer when you’re concentrating on what the basics are you’re supposed to be taking in? That doesn’t happen here. In fact, it’s got the feel of any number of the aforementioned successful supernatural series that always had faith that their over-reaching story arcs set up for the first two or three series were always going to be reached. There’s a quiet confidence. Kristin Kreuk is not playing a teenager to be trapped in high school well into the appearance of her first anti-wrinkle cream advert. They’ve got a set-up that can age well with the actors. Government conspiracies, family loyalties, there’s even an ex-Hollyoaks actor turning up as the suave playboy coroner. Truly.
New Beauty And The Beast has already been nominated for a People’s Choice Award under the category of Favourite New TV Drama for 2013, so the confidence of those story arcs doesn’t seem too misplaced. It’s fun, it’s something to look forward to further into the New Year once you’ve finished up all of those DVD box sets you asked for from your folks for Christmas but didn’t bargain on the actual timeframe it would take to watch. It’s even got eight episodes written by the series creator Ron Koslow – who also happened to create the original series back in the 1980s. And we’re back to why these characters have the same names as in the original. If it ain’t broke, just recast it. And see if it might actually exceed the three series span that came to a close in 1990. Now there’s a challenge.
Beauty And The Beast, Watch, Wednesday 16 January 2013
