I am – Hercules!!
A drama about an veteran undercover FBI agent breaking in a rookie, “The Beast” comes from screenwriter William Rotko (the Chris Cooper-Ryan Phillippe thriller “Breach”) and stars Patrick Swayze (“Dirty Dancing,” “Ghost”), Travis Fimmel (the 2003 WB series “Tarzan”), Larry Gilliard Jr. (“The Wire”) and Lindsay Pulsipher (“Touched By An Angel”). Entertainment Weekly gives it an “C” and says:

… 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. …

USA Today give it a star and a half (out of four) and says:

… Clearly, the show is aiming for urban grit. But that's hard to achieve when you're constantly distracting us with a ludicrous plot. …

The New York Times says:

… impressive for its resistance to cliché and remarkable for the mere fact of its execution. … It is a problem for “The Beast” that we are just as prone to trust Barker’s decency as his partner is. The moral and psychological ambiguity doesn’t appear to be there: however Barker might have sideswiped orthodoxy in the past, we get the sense that he was probably justified in breaking the rules he did. …

The Los Angeles Times says:

… If there is a cop-drama cliché writers Vincent Angell and William L. Rotko overlooked while creating the first two episodes of A&E's “The Beast,” we can be fairly certain they will nail it in Episode 3. …

The Chicago Tribune says:

… an entirely average action-adventure hour, one that recalls the macho cop shows of the ’70s and ’80s. …

The Washington Post says:

… premieres tonight on A&E, but it neither art nor entertainment be. The show deserves a rating of DB -- Don't Bother -- unless you happen to be a particularly loyal fan of Patrick Swayze … the script seems like it is based on a misspent life of watching crime movies, rather than actual experience. …

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette says:

… 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. …

The Kansas City Star says:

… The network brass probably figure, if the viewers don’t care whether Criss Angel is a charlatan, why should they care if “The Beast” bears any semblance to reality? …

The Boston Herald says:

… about as believable a crime drama as “The Ghost Whisperer.” … Every show requires a suspension of disbelief to operate, but this “Beast” is one burden. …

The Boston Globe says:

… 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. He's a lot more compelling than he should be, given the show's profusion of stock, crime-time lines about making choices and getting the job done. Really, 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. …

Variety says:

… a relatively toothless affair, drawing on a conventional cranky veteran/fresh-faced rookie dynamic …

The Hollywood Reporter says:

… there is nothing terribly special about the execution of the drama or its premise in the opening pair of episodes. What's unmistakable is the killer work of the star. May the man somehow beat the odds and fight defiantly on.

10 p.m. Thursday. A&E.

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