2012's Beauty and The Beast
With U.S. network The CW’s newest series Beauty and The Beast kicking off on October 11th, it looks to continue TV’s new obsession with turning everything dark, moody and with more than a shoe in the world of the fairy tale in misunderstood romances.
The new show, which will star Smallville’s Kristen Kreuk and Kiwi actor Jay Ryan, see the old fairy-tale get a makeover so massive, its own writers wouldn’t know it was still their work.
This time the show’s updated to New York, with our heroine Cat, a smart and highly capable police detective becoming involved with Vincent, a handsome doctor who has a shadowy past a terrible, beastly curse in both a professional and highly personal way.
Before you say anything, that’s not how it usually goes, no. The ‘beast’ is meant to be gruesome on the outside and glorious on the inside, but it does make romance a little easier if it’s the other way around.
It might have a foot in the occult, but let’s not kid ourselves; this is a show whose main gaze lies on the romance between the two leads
Ever since Twilight came along and made the world of vampires a giant romance, TV has been envious, yearning for a piece of that multi-million dollar cake.
Even the choice of how to do the beast this time around shows this. It’s hard for audiences to swoon for a giant creature as opposed to a gorgeous fella with a rather large scar on his cheek and a bit of a rage issue.
The Vampire Diaries built itself around the romance, as did Teen Wolf and True Blood. There usually wasn’t an episode of the latter that didn’t involve either Sookie or one of her friends getting their rocks off.
The crucial point is that these type of shows have changed their focus. Before, the more supernatural TV scales towards a male audience with shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Supernatural or Fringe. Since the release of Twilight though, the genre has now entirely shifted gears, changing its focus to a female audience and instead of delivering dark action and comedy, now focuses on romantic entanglements.
Thankfully though, TV’s ventures into the supernatural romance angle have one crucial thing that the Twilight series never had. A strong female protagonist. Sookie Stackhouse could quite often hold her own, Teen Wolf’s Allison is rather nifty with a bow and arrow and Beauty and The Beast’s lead is a homicide detective.
Thank goodness they’re not all damsels in constant distress like on Miss Bella Swan.
While it marks a great transition from the ratings obsessed world of TV, could we be a little more original than just romances with the handsome, misunderstood monster please?
FemaleFirst Cameron Smith
Tagged in TV Beauty and the Beast The Vampire Diaries True Blood