What the Fuck is Beauty and the Beast 2013?

I have just discovered that there was a Beauty & the Beast TV series in the 2010s, and I am increasingly convinced nobody actually pitched it. Instead, several television executives got drunk and played Mad Libs.

For those unfamiliar with Mad Libs, you have a story with words missing and ask someone else to provide random nouns, verbs and adjectives without telling them what the story is. You put them into the gaps and laugh at the resulting nonsense.

That is the only reasonable explanation for this programme.

The show is a remake of an earlier Beauty and the Beast series from the 1980s. That version starred Linda Hamilton, better known as Sarah fucking Connor from The Terminator.

Opposite her was Ron Perlman as the Beast, who would later become considerably more recognisable to me as Hellboy. So before we’ve even got to the remake, we’ve somehow connected Beauty and the Beast to both one of the biggest science-fiction franchises and a comic-book demon with a massive stone hand.

For the remake, they needed a new lead. Naturally, they chose Kristin Kreuk, better known to me as Lana Lang from Smallville. She plays Catherine Chandler, who is now an NYPD detective because apparently Beauty and the Beast needed murders to solve.

Then there’s the Beast.

When I first saw the poster, I wondered where the Beast actually was. It turns out he’s the conventionally attractive bloke with a scar.

Apparently that counts.

He’s also no longer permanently beastly. He’s the product of a military supersoldier experiment and transforms when sufficiently angry or stressed.

So they’ve basically given the Beast Hulk rules.

We therefore have Sarah Connor representing science fiction, Hellboy and Hulk supplying comic-book connections, Superman’s ex-girlfriend solving murders, a secret military supersoldier programme, and a title inherited from a fairy tale about a beautiful woman developing an alarmingly intimate relationship with something that isn’t entirely human.

This doesn’t sound like a television pitch.

It sounds like someone handed a group of writers a sheet of paper reading:

Famous fairy tale: ______ Actress from another genre show: ______ Her new profession: ______ Love interest: ______ Why he’s weird: ______ What makes him transform: ______

And somehow the answers were:

Beauty and the Beast. Lana Lang. Detective. Sexy supersoldier. Government experiment. Anger.

Then someone at The CW looked at the resulting paragraph and said:

“Excellent. We’ll have four seasons.”