COMMENTARY | Coming Soon reports the CW network is doing a reboot of the 1980s romance/fantasy series “Beauty and the Beast,” which starred Linda Hamilton as a New York assistant district attorney and Ron Perlman as a poetry-spouting beast/man.
The series depicted a community of misfits and ne’er-do-wells living in the underground tunnels of New York, led by a benevolent dictator called Father (Roy Dotrice). The community lived by scavenging and off of the kindness of strangers.
“Beauty and the Beast,” though it earned points for originality, was so heavy with romance novel themes as to often be difficult to watch by anyone of the male gender. The idea was that Perlman’s character, Vincent, and Hamilton’s character, Catherine, were lovers of sorts who never could be together as they were two different species. Vincent resembled a hybrid of a human and a lion, with the strength and occasional ferocity of the latter. It was presumed that society would not react well to the revelation of his existence.
The character of Catherine was actually killed off after two seasons when Hamilton left the show. “Beauty and the Beast” underwent a testosterone injecting with Vincent becoming a vigilante of sorts, doing battle against a madman named Gabriel (Stephen MacHattie). One of Gabriel’s signature lines: “I gave my children the gift of never having been born.” Jo Anderson played a police detective named Diana Bennett. There was no real romantic chemistry between the two and the show was canceled after 12 episodes.
The show was not a bad one, but it had a considerable number of holes in its concept. Vincent was not a repulsive looking creature and one would think, with a certain degree of public relations and legal preparation, he would have been well-received in the late 1980s society that show took place in. The whole “forever together/forever apart” theme seemed to be very much contrived. The show was popular among females and, where it tried to get crossover appeal from the male gender with story lines that ended with Vincent ripping apart the bad guys, it never really succeeded.
Reviving such a show, even with a different twist, does seem to suggest Hollywood is once again staying away from the original and is mining old material. Sometimes it works. More often than not it doesn’t.
Sources: CW Plans Beauty and the Beast Series, Coming Soon, Sept,16, 2011
Beauty and the Beast, TV.Rage