I loved the original Beauty and the Beast TV show in the late 80s. It was both dark and sweet, romantic and full of danger. At least, that's what I thought when I was 19. When I catch an episode occasionally now, twenty years of changing entertainment later, I think it's just a bit too melodramatic for me.

Well, that's one of the parts they kept when they redid the series in 2012. I watched the pilot a couple weeks ago just to try it out. The picture of the couple on Netflix (not the one you see here) is so “glamour-shot”-ized (it looks like a New York City underwear ad, bleck!) that I didn't even realize it was Kristin Kreuk from Smallville. I love Kristin! I didn't recognize Jay Ryan, but my Aussie friends will.

They kept the basics of the original show and updated it to make it a bit more modern. Theoretically, I like the changes. Catherine is a police officer instead of a lawyer, and Vincent was part of a super soldier experiment in the military. He was a doctor before, but his family died when the Twin Towers came down so he enlisted.

Now the government bad guys who created him want to kill him like they did the rest of his platoon, and yet Catherine's cop instincts have her following him trying to figure out how he's related to her mother's death. Because of her, the bad guys find him and…

So there's lots of potentially good storyline, but they play it too melodramatically. Everyone always seems to be full of angst and upset about everyone else's choices. And some of the more interesting plot bits are glossed over too lightly.

It's just my opinion, of course. But I found it to be a good show to turn on when I'm doing accounting and just need some background noise to keep me company.

2 stars, Didn't Like It