LITTLE ROCK — It’s not that The CW’s latest fantasy adventure Beauty and the Beast is bad. It’s just, well, sort of silly and convoluted.
And it’ll be a disappointment for those who remember the 1980s TV series of the same name.
Beauty and the Beast debuts at 8 p.m. today and stars the very pretty Kristin Kreuk (Smallville) as Catherine “Cat” Chandler and the equally pretty Jay Ryan (Terra Nova) as Vincent Keller.
Don’t misunderstand. The primary purpose of most CW series is to display pretty young people running around doing pretty young people stuff that will appeal to the niche young people demographic.
Beauty and the Beast succeeds nicely on those accounts. All the young ladies with high-power jobs such as homicide detective could moonlight as runway models and the guys could earn extra bucks with Chippendales.
This is a loose retooling of the 1987 CBS series that starred Linda Hamilton as a crusading assistant district attorney and Ron Perlman as a lion-man beast who lived in the sewers of New York.
In that series, Vincent became Cat’s guardian and so Vincent also is in the new version. Except the new beast isn’t beastly most of the time. Just don’t get him riled up.
(Spoilers ahead.)
In tonight’s pilot, we learn that Cat is a fairly humorless, no-nonsense homicide detective. That’s because she carries the burden of a tragic past.
When she was a teen, Cat witnessed the murder of her mother. The two gunmen would have killed her, too, but someone — or some thing — saved her.
Naturally, no one has ever believed her story. They say it was some sort of animal that attacked the killers. But Cat knows that, as bizarre as it was, it was also human.
Years pass and Cat is a young and pretty police detective working with her equally young and pretty partner and close friend, Tess Vargas (Nina Lisandrello).
Cat also has a flirty relationship with hunky medical examiner Evan Marks (Max Brown), but her romantic interludes tend toward the bad boys. That’s a constant concern for Cat’s younger sister, the very pretty Heather (Nicole Gale Anderson).
A new case eventually leads Cat and Tess to a hunky young doctor (Vincent) who has been living outside of society for the past 10 years with the help of his buddy, the non-hunky (he’s the sidekick) J.T. Forbes (Austin Basis).
J.T. helps Vincent hide his terrible, terrible secret. When Vincent becomes enraged, he turns into a terrifying beast with superhuman strength, speed and senses.
One thing leads to another and Vincent eventually admits to Cat it was he who saved her that dark and fateful night, but he keeps from her the fact that he has been her secret guardian ever since.
Cat agrees to keep his secret, but soon becomes obsessed with him, and their relationship becomes a strain on everyone she knows.
Maybe my problem with the convoluted pilot was that it was all over the place. Is it a romance? Is it an action tale? Is it a mystery? Is it a vigilante saga? Is it trying to be all of those at once?
I’ll give the series a couple of episodes to settle down or I’m moving on.
The Vampire Diaries, 7 p.m. today The CW. It’s Season 4 for the pretty young folks in this saga of two hunky vampire brothers obsessed with the same pretty girl.
A reminder for fans: You’ll recall that Elena (Nina Dobrev) drowned at the end of last season. Well, she died with vampire blood in her system and awakens to discover she must now endure the terrifying transition to become a vampire or face certain, for real, death.
Walking Dead. One of the best shows on TV returns at 8 p.m. Sunday on AMC. Warm up with a Walking Dead marathon that kicks off at 9 a.m. Saturday and runs all the way up to the premiere.
Warning: Watching them all back to back could be hazardous to your health.
Debate numbers. In case you were wondering, more than 67 million viewers watched the first presidential debate Oct. 3. That’s almost 15 million more than the first debate between John McCain and Barack Obama in 2008.
The record remains the 81 million who watched the Carter vs. Reagan face-off on Oct. 28, 1980.
The veep candidates square off at 8 p.m. today, with the presidential candidates returning at the same time Tuesday and Oct. 22.
The TV Column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. E-mail:
mstorey@arkansasonline.com
Weekend, Pages 32 on 10/11/2012