Review: AMC's 'Beast' is severely malnourished

Once again, AMC has mistaken “dreary” for “drama.”

Don’t take that the wrong way. In recent years, the cable network has given us some of the best, and best-liked, shows on television, from Mad Men and The Walking Dead to the recently concluded The Night Manager — a miniseries so well cast and well done, it managed to glide over each of its rather glaring plot holes.

It's just that when AMC misses, it tends to miss in the dull-and-dreary direction. Think Halt and Catch Fire, Rubicon, Low Winter Sun — and now, Feed the Beast (Sunday, 10 ET/PT, then Tuesdays at 10; * out of four).

This latest misfire is particularly depressing, because Feed stars David Schwimmer, who just revived his acting career with his nuanced turn in FX’s The People vs. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story. Here, however, he spends seemingly every second of screen time using one of his most Friends-familiar expressions — that on-the-verge-of-tears hangdog look — and while he does it well, it’s not something you want to see for an hour at a time.

Schwimmer is Tommy, a widowed wine expert whose young son TJ (Elijah Jacob, doing a fine job under difficult circumstances) has not spoken since he witnessed his mom’s death in a hit-and-run accident. When Tommy lost his wife, he also lost his job and his best friend, Dion (Jim Sturgess), a just-released con who went to prison for burning down the restaurant where they both worked.

Wait, here’s the best part: The restaurant was owned by a brutal gangster with daddy issues who actually calls himself “The Tooth Fairy” (Michael Gladis, sinking in a hopeless role). Apparently, the Easter Bunny was taken.

Tommy and Dion have long dreamed of opening an upscale restaurant in the Bronx — a New York neighborhood the show discusses as if it combined the inaccessibility of Bhutan with the danger of Somalia. They're determined to make that dream come true, but it means secret deals by Dion with the Tooth Fairy and an obsessed cop, and a reluctant deal by Tommy with his bigoted father (John Doman).

It's a tossup as to what exactly about Beast you may find least bearable. For some, it will be the mix of crime-show melodrama, cheap cynicism and soap-opera theatrics. For others, it will be the sad fact that no one involved seems to have ever heard an actual human being speak.

But for many, it will be the show’s blatant attempt to cash in on the current fascination with restaurants as theater and food as porn. (Note the orgasmic scream of “Yes, Yes!” at a particularly florid description of a dessert wine pairing.) It’s only a matter of time before a food blogger is added to the mix, or until TJ finds new purposewriting Yelp reviews.

Not that it much matters. Fear is simply one of those shows where, after one episode, you're likely to feel certain you know where every plot point is headed and even more certain you don’t want to follow along.

And what could be more dreary than that?