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6
" gives "Beauty and the Beast - Season 1" a 6."
Written by on 31 May 2013.
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Beauty and the Beast - Season 1

Sometimes series have very misleading names. When I first heard about a show called ‘Beauty and the Beast’ I immediately connected this title to one of my favourite fairy tales, about a woman who is kidnapped by a monstrous being but later falls in love with her captor. While watching this series, I found out that the plot is only very loosely based on this fairy tale and is instead inspired by a television series from the 1980s. This series is about a woman whose life is saved by a mysterious beast-like creature, an event which changes both their lives. Although it does not have a lot in common with the fairy tale, it did sound interesting, and I really hoped they would be able to keep it interesting for an entire season.

The series starts with a flashback to the year 2003, where Catherine Chandler (Kristin Kreuk, 'Smallville') witnesses her mother being murdered. She would have been killed too, if it wasn’t for Vincent Keller (Jay Ryan, 'Neighbours'), a former soldier and doctor. Everyone thinks he died while fighting for the US Army, but instead he volunteered for a medical trial which went horribly wrong, leading to a change in his DNA which makes him have animalistic ‘episodes’, during which he becomes extremely strong. Because this makes him very dangerous, he has been hiding from society for nine years, while only his roommate J.T. Forbes (Austin Basis, 'Life Unexpected') knows about his existence. Catherine, after these nine years, has become a detective at the New York Police Department and a case leads her back to Vincent. From the moment Catherine lays eyes on him, she knows he was the ‘beast’ that saved her life, she becomes obsessed with him, and eventually they fall in love. Meanwhile, however, Muirfield, the organisation which turned Vincent into a monster, is hunting him down, as is Catherine’s other love interest Evan (Max Brown, 'Spooks'). Catherine is desperately trying to keep Vincent’s existence a secret, which is why she lies to her friends and family, most notably her sister Heather (Nicole Gale Anderson, 'Make It Or Break It') and her co-worker and best friend Tess (Nina Lisandrello, 'Conviction'), but as the story progresses the walls are closing in on both Vincent and Catherine.

Although this is only a short summary, there are even more things going on. Usually it’s definitely a good thing that there’s enough action to keep the show going, but in this case I think it might be a bit too much. The creators of the series are perhaps somewhat too ambitious, because it is not only a romantic drama, but also a detective show, and it also deals with some medical issues. In addition, there are also many secrets which need to be unravelled (for example when Catherine finds out her own mother was involved in Vincent’s trial) and Vincent’s metamorphosis creates a supernatural atmosphere. A really good show would have been able to pull off this overload of genres and ideas, but in this case the audience can’t help but notice that even the creators of 'Beauty and the Beast' might be slightly confused by the extensive amount of ideas that they present, making the plot quite unrealistic from time to time.

Unfortunately, the same can be said about the actors. While Kristin Kreuk, and most of the supporting actors are doing a very good job, Jay Ryan isn’t very credible as Vincent and seems to rely more on his looks than his acting. Especially when Vincent has to tell Catherine he loves her, his (often cliché) lines like ‘You are my life’ and ‘I can’t live without you’ sound like he doesn’t really mean them. He makes them sound almost robotic, which is weird seeing as is playing a character who is half man/half beast. Ryan does improve slightly with every episode, but I’m convinced there must have been other actors who would have been able to portray Vincent more convincingly.

All in all, Beauty and the Beast is a show which, above all, is too ambitious. They want to be too many genres and still focus on the romance between Vincent and Catherine but in the process of doing so turning this into a cliché. Even so, you still keep watching because Beauty and the Beast is never in lack of action. However, the show never leaves you surprised as after a while the structure of the episodes becomes quite predictable and you find that, when another mystery has been uncovered, you were right from the start. The first season has just finished, and I must admit I will probably watch the second season as well, hoping that it will be more exciting and less predictable than this first one. They could even add some fairy-tale elements into the mix of different genres, since the title certainly raises this expecation, but has so far not been able to satisfy this.
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