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The Beast
SERIES: A&E;, Thursday 10:00p (60 minutes)
Starring
Patrick Swayze,
Travis Fimmel,
Lindsay Pulsipher,
Larry Gilliard,
and
Brette Taylor
Patrick Swayze is a veteran FBI agent training his rookie partner in the art of deep undercover work.
| GENRE(S): |
Drama
|
| CREATED BY: |
Vincent Angell
William Rotko
|
| FIRST AIR DATE: |
January 15, 2009 |
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
70
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Rob Owen
The Beast, named after Barker's reference to his FBI job, seems like a pretty plain cop drama with added "Road House"-style grit until the end of the first hour, when a new wrinkle adds more intrigue.
70
Philadelphia Inquirer Jonathan Storm
The show, with a strange and hard-to-believe conspiracy underpinning, requires a leap of faith, but Swayze himself, gaunt and intensely energetic, is magnificent.
70
The New York Times Ginia Bellafante
Patrick Swayze’s performance as an ungoverned F.B.I. man in The Beast, a new crime drama beginning on Thursday on A&E;, is impressive for its resistance to cliche and remarkable for the mere fact of its execution.
63
Chicago Tribune Maureen Ryan
Swayze’s performance is almost reason enough to tune in--if you don’t mind the show’s more derivative elements--the actor’s co-star, Fimmel, is often the least interesting thing about The Beast.
63
Chicago Sun-Times Andrew Herrmann
While he could use some better support, Swayze turns in a subtle and strong performance.
63
New York Post Linda Stasi
The Beast is weighted down by a concept that was already tired when Moses was a teenager -wizened, jaded rogue cop teaches rookie the ways of the streets and blah, blah, blah. But Swayze brings to the role, as Rourke did in "The Wrestler," the kind of seriousness that only real-life suffering can impart.
60
Hollywood Reporter Ray Richmond
The action often is energetic and intriguing but is sometimes brought down by Fimmel's uneven performance. The rest of the supporting cast acquits itself well, and Swayze manages to bring the words of scribes Vincent Angell and William L. Rotko to menacing life.
60
New York Daily News David Hinckley
While it follows the current cable pattern of taking dramas a little further than traditional broadcast shows, The Beast essentially serves up familiar cop fare.
60
Philadelphia Daily News Ellen Gray
Certainly Swayze, as undercover FBI agent Charles Barker, is better than his material. If The Beast, which turns on the relationship between the experienced and not exactly by-the-book Barker and the young agent, Ellis Dove (Fimmel), he's supposed to be training, is more rooted than reality than, say, Fox's "24," it can't be by much.
60
Newark Star-Ledger Alan Sepinwall
Basically, it's a dumber version of "The Shield." Swayze's performance and the always-memorable Chicago locales are frequently undercut by dialogue that's clumsy and/or spells out things we can see for ourselves, and by model-turned-actor Fimmel, last seen on the WB's deservedly short-lived "Tarzan" remake.
60
PopMatters Cynthia Fuchs
It’s this credibility that makes The Beast go. Even when the show trots out cliches (rainy nights, junkie informants and strippers, a pretty blond neighbor/love interest for Ellis [Rose, played by Lindsay Pulsipher]), Charlie is compelling, his many performances jaggedy and surprising, his rhythms weird, his sense of humor entertainingly bleak.
60
Slate Troy Patterson
Everybody already knows everything there is to know about this maverick make of stock figure and the ready-made tone of cop shows where all the barroom jukeboxes play only electric blues.
60
Boston Globe Matthew Gilbert
Barker is written as the stereotypical rogue cop who crosses the line into illegality, but Swayze's presence is complex enough to add mystery and weight that aren't in the script....[but] take Swayze and his gravitas out of the picture, and The Beast is a mediocre series that would probably lurk on the cable TV lineup without much notice.
58
Newsday Verne Gay
It's pretty much impossible to describe The Beast without getting tangled in the underbrush of potboiler cliche....The good news, in fact, the wonderful news, is that Swayze really is good.
50
Entertainment Weekly Ken Tucker
We could be spending our time reading better hardboiled yarns from fresh tough-guy novelists like Charles S. Houston or Duane Swierczynski. In fact, I'd rather watch an hour of
Swayze reading one of their tales aloud than sit through an episode of The Beast.
50
Variety Brian Lowry
The series does feature some solid performers in supporting roles, including Kevin J. O'Connor and "The Wire's" Larry Gilliard Jr., and the close of the second hour offers a modest tug to see where the story arc might be heading. The actual cops-and-robbers stuff, however, remains mundane at best.
40
Orlando Sentinel Hal Boedeker
The show is too glamorous for its own good; more realism and grit would help.
40
Los Angeles Times Mary McNamara
Swayze, his face worn craggy by age and his battle with pancreatic cancer, remains a noble figure despite the ridiculousness that surrounds him. With the bearing and the mien of a man who is fighting for the survival of his own humanity, he clearly could have done much more with less.
40
The New Yorker Nancy Franklin
The characterizations in The Beast show very little imagination; as for the plots, haven’t we seen enough shows in which agents reveal their sterling natures by freeing Eastern European sex slaves?
37
USA Today Robert Bianco
Clearly, the show is aiming for urban grit. But that's hard to achieve when you're constantly distracting us with a ludicrous plot.
30
Washington Post Tom Shales
Swayze seems to be taking Charlie Barker seriously, and Charlie's not worth it; he's just another in TV's increasingly populous community of bellicose antiheroes, supposedly macho loners who throw away the book and operate according to their own primal codes of behavior.
30
Kansas City Star Aaron Barnhart
I have now watched two episodes of the new A&E; series The Beast, and I am filled with questions. How many brain cells did I lose watching two episodes of The Beast?
10
Miami Herald Glenn Garvin
The Beast is singularly unimaginative, a collection of set-pieces barely bound together by a narrative thread, substituting attitude for substance and coyness for coherence.
 The average user rating for this tv show is 9.6 (out of 10) based on 5 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
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