Hello and welcome back to this corpse known as “Series Reviews” where as the title states, I review TV series. I wanna do more of these, it’s just that it takes a while to finish a season of a show (or an entire show) and I am also really lazy and dumb and I am sorry, please forgive me. With that out of the way, let’s review a short-lived show.
Ladies and gentlemen… “The Beast”.
“The Beast” follows veteran FBI agent Charles Barker (Patrick Swayze, R.I.P) as he unwillingly takes on a new and young partner named Ellis Dove (Travis Fimmel). Thing is though that he doesn’t know that Ellis was recruited as a sort of double agent to investigate Barker and his activities. You see, Barker isn’t your typical by-the-books agent, he does everything his way and is suspected of some shady shit. So throughout the show we get to see both how these two solve cases as the undercover agents that they are, but we also see Ellis question his loyalties. And while we have seen similar things before, maybe this show could still do it in an original way. But it didn’t. While the plot offers a few pretty decent twists throughout, it never really feels original or even that engaging. I didn’t completely hate, I mean like I said, there were a few decent twists every now and then. It was also pretty entertaining to see how our heroes would solve these cases every episode. However I feel like the episodes could be a little slow at times. There are so much potential for the plot to be something truly great, but there are almost an equal amount of stuff holding it back which is a shame.
What really helps the show stand out a little more is Patrick Swayze. And I’m not saying that simply becuase I have been a fan of him for a long time, I am saying it because he was legitimately good in this show. This is most definitely the most rugged and dark I have ever seen him. While he isn’t the typical “Charming Mr. Swayze” in this show, he still has some charm to him in the show. Not gonna lie, this might be the best performance I have ever seen form the guy, and I fucking loved him in “Ghost”. Next up is Travis Fimmel who I know stars in the show “Vikings” which I will see at some point. He will also be in the upcoming “Warcraft” movie which is kind of fun. Anyway, how was he in the show? Eh, he was fine. He never really impressed me, but he was also never bad. He was good enough. I did however really like how well he and Swayze played off of eachother. They had pretty good chemistry. Every other actor were pretty good in the show too. Also, Lou Diamond Phillips showed up in an episode. Fun to see that guy still get work.
The music was done by a man named W.G. Snuffy Walden (Pffffft, hahahaha!). And it was decent. Nothing I haven’t really heard before, but it was also not bad. It was good, it worked for the show, that’s it. Although I did really like the opening theme, that I thought was really good.
While I haven’t really truly praised the show for anything yet, let’s give it some props. The cinematography for the show was really good. It gave the show a dark and gritty look that really benefited it. I also really liked some of the writing in the show, it was really well done. The parts I liked were either smart & insightful or darkly funny. And the action in the show was pretty good too I suppose.
The show actually got some pretty good reviews over it’s short run but never really had a lot of watchers. But overall it got pretty mixed reception. On Rotten Tomatoes it has a 59% positive rating. On Metacritic it has a score of 51/100. And on imdb.com it has a score of 8,0/10.
“The Beast” is a show that had tons of potential to be great, but never really reached those heights. It had an okay plot, good characters/acting, decent music, good directing & cinematography, good action and some pretty solid writing at times. Although the show moves a little slowly at times. Time for my final score. *Ahem*. My final score for “The Beast” is a 7,98/10. While not great, it’s still worth a watch.
Review for “The Beast” is completed.
I miss Patrick Swayze…
TheMarckoguy 