Dirty Dancing

Ms. Hardin is appealing but a bit lumpish in the dance scenes. Mr. Cassidy, looking as if he has just spent hours pumping iron, bumps, grinds and gyrates with all the sexual steaminess the producers are clearly seeking. Can Johnny and Baby keep this misbegotten romance simmering for a few weeks, never mind a full season? Can enough dirty dancing be squeezed into future half-hour episodes to maintain the mambo momentum? I doubt it.

Everything about the series is cuddly instead of crackling, simpy instead of sexy. Cassidy seems more like an Amherst sophomore than an off- season mechanic, while Hardin flounces around like a perky princess...The dancing itself, although relatively racy for prime-time placement, is not so much dirty as slightly soiled. [28 Oct 1988, p.6]

Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey may not have been James Dean and Natalie Wood, but Patrick Cassidy and Melora Hardin look as if they'd be more at home in a TV version of "Revenge of the Nerds." [29 Oct 1988, p.9]

Cassidy is a decently capable dancer, but the routines performed by the troupe at the resort seem utterly tame, so mild that Stevenson's fuddy-duddy objections seem only puzzling. They are not nearly as puzzling, however, as CBS's decision to pencil Dirty Dancing onto the network dance card. [29 Oct 1998, p.D-15]

Play[s] like an extended shampoo commercial and lacking the edge and joyful vigor of the movie on which it is based....The premiere of the TV series is a static bore, mismanaged and miscast.