South Beach
UPN | Release Date: January 11, 2006
CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
29
METASCORE
Generally unfavorable reviews based on 18 Critic Reviews
Positive:
2
Mixed:
2
Negative:
14

Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
63
Chicago Sun-TimesDoug Elfman
Season 1 Review: "South Beach" isn't the terrible waste of viewing time a cynic might expect. But it is a conventionally drawn, sudsy soap. Read full review
63
New York PostLinda Stasi
Season 1 Review: Unlike "Baywatch," it's not as bad as it sounds -- or as good -- depending on your opinion of beach dramas built largely around boobs and biceps. Read full review
60
L.A. WeeklyRobert Abele
Season 1 Review: Serious about its silliness, this show grasps the concept of prime time as vacation time. Read full review
58
Entertainment WeeklyWhitney Pastorek
Season 1 Review: It's The O.C. meets Miami Vice, the MTV Video Music Awards, and Models Inc., plus just a dash of Hamlet for flow. [13 Jan 2006, p.71]
38
New York Daily NewsDavid Hinckley
Season 1 Review: This latest attempt at a series with glamorous young people frolicking at an even more glamorous resort doesn't demonstrate significantly more depth than its unsuccessful predecessors. Read full review
38
USA TodayRobert Bianco
Season 1 Review: Tawdry, empty and inept, South Beach is UPN's too-late-in-the-game attempt to transfer The O.C. to the other coast. Read full review
30
The New York TimesAlessandra Stanley
Season 1 Review: It marks a return to the 80's era of "Dallas," "Dynasty" and "Knots Landing," when the prime-time landscape was dotted with lurid, silly soap operas that provided the kind of catty catharsis that regular shows neglect. Read full review
20
Boston GlobeMatthew Gilbert
Season 1 Review: In between all the poolside exhibitionism and dance-floor romantic politics, guns appear and faceless thugs are killed. That means our young cast members get to angst about whether they're truly in danger and some villain is going to force them to eat a loaf of bread at gunpoint. Read full review
20
Los Angeles TimesPaul Brownfield
Season 1 Review: [A] warmed-over hip-hop saga. Read full review
20
Miami HeraldGlenn Garvin
Season 1 Review: Maybe the best way to explain UPN's new drama South Beach is to tell you that when Vanessa Williams warns a young model that ''South Beach will eat you alive,'' I fully expected the next scene to be a horde of zombie parking attendants chewing the entrails of half-naked girls in the lobby of the Delano. Cannibalism is about the only thing missing from this delirious new trashfest of hard bodies and soft brains. Read full review
20
Pittsburgh Post-GazetteRob Owen
Season 1 Review: Filled with terrible dialogue. Read full review
20
Seattle Post-IntelligencerMelanie McFarland
Season 1 Review: "South Beach" could fall into guilty pleasure territory, but it really is as corny as it sounds. Read full review
20
PopMattersMary Colgan
Season 1 Review: Despite the many hard bodies on display, South Beach is flabby. Read full review
12
San Francisco ChronicleTim Goodman
Season 1 Review: It's pointless to talk about who "stars" in this bloated music video, but the agents for both Vanessa Williams and Giancarlo Esposito need to be fired, summarily. Read full review
10
Chicago TribuneSid Smith
Season 1 Review: The dialogue and plot contrivances are banal, the acting is cartoon and the whole thing is more transparent than a see-through bikini. Read full review
10
The Hollywood ReporterBarry Garron
Season 1 Review: You'd think that someone somewhere down the line... would have lobbied for the rudiments of a story, characters with texture and dialogue more sophisticated than shopping mall conversation. Read full review
10
VarietyPhil Gallo
Season 1 Review: The scripts are sophomoric, the acting wooden and the direction uninspired -- [the] show starts so thin it must have been on the South Beach Diet for months. Read full review
10
Washington PostTom Shales
Season 1 Review: A preposterous and pretentious drama series.... Fortunately, there is a way out: your channel-changing remote, wondrous transport to that blessed refuge known as Anywhere Else. Read full review
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