- Network: Paramount+
- Series Premiere Date: Jan 29, 2024
Critic Reviews
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Certainly it’s easy enough to click the next episode button. As such, it’s a shame when scenes capitulate to cartoonishly sleazy brutality (the climax to the second episode is particularly off-putting). The bigger problem is the loss of the film’s streak of humour.
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Sexy Beast the series exorcises his fever-dream flourishes and fills in the blanks with monotonous mobster clichés. It’s entirely lacking in the eerie power of the source material, instead playing out like EastEnders with a bigger budget while lacking any sense of mischief or danger.
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Ironically, upping the gore only blunts the increasingly jaded viewer’s response over time. “Sexy Beast” is often so preoccupied with adding emotional and physical stakes that the show distracts from a criminal gang’s simple quest to stick it to the man.
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While the heists, pummelling and kinky threats are not necessarily unenjoyable, the whole series – Deedee and Gal’s love story aside – is pretty one-note, with Gal reduced to “affable blond fella” and the majority of the cast doing a version of panto villain.
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Lines from the film aren’t so much cleverly referenced as clumsily copied. The end result feels glib and cynical. This is a deeply unsexy beast.