User reviews

Oh what fun this show was! First you have the incredibly *gorgeous* Daniel Goddard as Dar, the BeastMaster. The producers had the good sense to keep him wearing as little as possible. Even in the third season, when he dressed a little more "modestly", you could still see those stupendous biceps. Yummy! Then you have the gay subtext. This is most pronounced in Season Two, where the five most important male characters all seem to be gay archetypes: Dar (Gym-Boy), Tao (Nerd with a crush on Gym-Boy), Zad (Leather Daddy), Voden (Party Boy) and The Ancient One (All-Powerful, All-Knowing Old Auntie). Then you have the fact that it was actually fairly well-written and acted. Admittedly, Season Three was the weakest. The show would have been better had they not gone down that particular road, but, overall it was a lot of fun and most certainly not the worst way to spend an hour. Oh did I mention how gorgeous Daniel Goddard is? (*sigh*)

It's hard to find good shows on regular TV that deal with the supernatural. I am so glad I discovered this show even if it is no longer being made. The only other good supernatural TV show I could find before was Buffy The Vampire Slayer which I love and it's spinoff Angel is OK, but lately both shows have been dissapointing me and I started looking for others.

Coming across Beastmaster has been good for me and I am sure it has been/will be for others. The actors are great and play their characters perfect. The direction is good as well and hardly misses a beat. Also there is beautiful scenery and great dialoge and storyline. It has everything people look for in a good show. I hope others will discover it an enjoy it as much as I have.

Two guys frolic among the wild animals, and sleep with a really gorgeous white tiger. The Beastmaster TV series was fun and hilarious to watch. Dar the Beastmaster finds a very passive friend, Tao, who spontaneously dedicates his life to living with the Beastmaster. He is basically the Beastmaster's man-servant.

The villains are straight out of some sado-masochistic fantasy world. Mean guys who are very buff, and always wearing leather, are chasing down Dar or Tao to punish them in some degrading way. Dar & Tao always have some charm, sword, magic talisman, or other item that the bad guys need to get in order to conquer the local village. Because this was a low-budget production, you never saw too many people in the towns or the armies. That actually made it seem more realistic. Somewhere in the past, in any small region, this type of local power struggle could have happened.

The villains posture, growl and want to tie up the Beastmaster and torture him. Sometimes they do. Every episode was basically the same. Recurring characters, played by gorgeous super-models, like Emilie Ravin, Natalie Mendoza, or Monica Schnarre would be involved in the stories. They usually played witches or magical beings. Nobody ever hooked up with the hot models. It was always guy on guy adventure.

To begin with, I like this show, I own all three seasons on DVD. It is a fantasy show, utterly lacking any need for higher level thinking. This is not "Farscape" or "Star Trek" which might require the viewer to actively think about what is going on, or even "Xena" and "Hercules" which actually stuck to one major plot line. But it is good aimless fun. And Monikka Schnarre would look good reading a phone book.

What surprised me however was the lack of any sense of time. The show started the first season in the stone age. Bones, wood and stone consisted of the materials available to create tools and weapons. Okay, I'll buy it. Darr's Halbred could have been created of two leg bones of an extremely large animal, the metatarsals or metacarpals of an elephant would suffice (or is it the phalanges?). Season two rolls around and we've got bronze. Initially only the Nords had it, until the middle of the season. After the half-way mark, everyone was learning to extract bronze, independently of each other. Tao was developing ways to fly. The crossbow was invented. I still wasn't thrown, the liberties hadn't truly been taken yet. That's when season three rolled around. The first two seasons were thrown out the window. Everyone had iron weapons. Darr's sword appeared to be a Katana made of steel. STEEL!!! Zad had Knights running around. We went through roughly 7000-8000 years of evolution in a short three year span. None of the actors even aged discernably. The animals even took a back seat to him finding his family.

It seems to me the people pulling the strings decided to take the show different ways from episode to episode. The Sorceress would show up in black leather trying to be evil in one week, and then be wearing clothes straight from the runway the next. Not that I'm complaining. She can wear leather, dresses, skirts, bikinis or even nothing and I still would watch.

Oh well, I still watched and bought the show. They succeeded in what they wanted to accomplish. Just don't watch the show with a critical view and you'll do fine.

I've been dipping in and out of this as a guilty pleasure. It's more guilt than pleasure though, especially the later series.

The pleasures mostly come from ogling the collection of beach bunnies (both genders) jiggling around in various states of undress. As far as I can determine, this world operates an exclusive access policy: no fuglies, no kids, no geezers. Fine with me.

Series one makes a very brave attempt to stick to the stone age - or rather, bone age - idiom, with a few fairly understandable lapses in costume and set dressing (say: what are they shaving with?). It's a fresh and interesting divergence from the usual generic "Early Olden Days" Swords and Sandals setting, which makes the later seasons all the more disappointing when they apparently just forget what sort of milieu they're supposed to be portraying, and loot the Xena props department.

There's an attempt to weave some backstory exposition into the weekly "Run, jump, rescue boy/girl hostage from the Growling Menace" plots, but the uniformly bland and un-nuanced delivery of all of the actors - including and especially the leads - robs it of any lasting appeal. Season 3 plots devolve into a tiresome grind of "Seek this / fetch that" - perhaps the writers had been playing a lot of Ultima? Whether Beastmaster holds any deep appeal for you probably largely depends on whether you buy into the hippy premise that animals are, like our friends, and so, like, totally full of ancient wisdom and stuff. Hmm. No. Nature is struggle, not co-operation. I'm not sure why being able to talk to a carnivore would make any difference to it devouring you or not. Presumably Dar sells them on the health benefits of eating leaves and bark.

It seems from watching that the producers of this series didn't take the time to plan their "bible" before beginning the series. The basic story, handed down from Andre Norton through the series of films, was fine, but this kind of high-concept fantasy series requires an established mythology to guide the storytelling. This one seemed to flounder around without much dramatic impetus. The leads were highly appealing, if inexperienced at the beginning of the series, and individual episodes were often entertaining. The final story arc over the last half of the final season was too slapdash and amateurish to redeem the series as a whole. While it did draw the story to a finish, it wasn't a particularly compelling finish; the appearance of Marc Singer (the star of the Beastmaster films) was a silly stunt. One can only hope that Daniel Goddard and Jackson Raine move on to better projects--both are appealing enough to merit it.

let's go point by point. There are 4 points total. A. Dar and Tao (and the actors portraying them) work together very well. There were a few episodes in the first season that made Tao look like an idiot but other than those I'd say they were equals in almost every respect throughout the series. They complimented each other well and Dar wasn't always the teacher. I especially like where they save each-others lives.

B there is a sense of cohesion to 75% of the episodes. The rest seem aimless and even contrary to the episodes in the main flow. I'm thinking of Guardian, circle of life and the role of the two Magic people; It didn't seem like the writers knew where to take them.

C. Nords rule! Nords, priests and even Iara included, season 2 enemies are great. Well Iara is more of an antagonist (pun intended) than an adversary. Season 2 episodes with Terrons weren't that great; thankfully there were not very many of those.

D.I love animals and this series shows us how wrong some of our preconceived notions about the stupidity and brutality of animals really is. When the focus is on the animals, that is when the show really shines.

Again, there are poor and contrary episodes in the show, but for the most part this is a forgotten treasure. Look it up in local listings here it's on at 4 am Saturday morning but still it's usually worth it. I give it 4 out of 5 stars.

Excellent shows. Great acting and plot lines. Dar has a great attitude to help animals, talk to them, and fight for justice. Daniel Goddard is a perfect actor for the show. Very strong personality and perfectly built for the role, especially to wear a loincloth. All the characters played a great role. Tao who was calm but faced adventure with Dar. As I watched the shows, they gave the impression that you don't need material things for integrity, it's how you react to your environment. It was great seeing Marc Singer in an episode who also was a great actor in the original Beastmaster. Keep up the good work Daniel, you made a great role. No killing, stealing, swearing, or indecent sex scenes.

I watch this show most of the time. It's erratic, but I like it a lot anyway.

The producers seem to have relatively little idea of what kind of show they want to do. It's now in its third season, and it appears to have gone to heroic fantasy. (Any episodes you see Dar having a sword, they're all third season. And he puts up quite a protest around it, but you'd have to actually watch the show to see it.) Last season would be better characterized as a sort of low-level high fantasy, where most of the emphasis was on complex relationships between all the different characters. And a lot of the first season was a (tragic) love story.

The acting is great, but it's very much in a particular style. It's an understated style that shows up a lot in Canadian productions (it's a Canada-Australia joint production).

But the best part is: They kill characters. Major characters. Not many of them, but people actually die. The storyline moves on. I get really tired of watching adventure shows with no threat of death. It's pretty much a given that Dar won't die (or they'd have to rename the show) but everybody else, except for gods (none of which have made appearances, unlike in a show like Xena) and some of the demigod-level characters (I'm thinking of The Ancient One) has been fair game. It helps make the show exciting, which is the whole point of adventure, right?

The acting style's not for everyone, but if you like it, watch the show. The stories are generally pretty well-written, and the show's got guts.

Like I said...I love the show, but the hosts flirting with each other is obnoxious. I feel like it's demeaning to the athletes with all the timeless effort they spent to get there. I get that the show needs ratings. And that the hosts bring personality. However, this is a sports show. Not...a seductive comedy show. As viewers, we expect sports commentary. We can't take it seriously, if we are watching crude comments between international hosts, flirting and all-out unsportmanship dialog amongst them. In my younger years as an athlete, sportsmanship was preached every day. It was a badge of honor. I struggle as a retired athlete with loving the concept of the challenge vs. Just stop watching because I find the hosts disrespectful of what it takes to get there. They seem to think it's a comedy/dating shoe. Make up your mind Producers.

My son, Simon Burnett, is the stunt double for Daniel, so we have been watching every episode. It comes across as at least two shows in one. The out of doors, walking in the woods and fighting. And the other, the mystical- fairy one, with special effects and clothing. It would work better if the mystical world was only at night, a dream scape for the characters and story line.

I really enjoy this show. As an Environmental Studies major I enjoy the nature aspect of the show. The location is so beautiful and when the animals are used for a scene you can't help but smile because the animals work so well with the actors. Daniel Goddard and Jackson Raine are great actors who play their characters perfectly. If you are looking for a show to make you laugh and with enough action to satisfy you, this is it.

Speaking strictly of the first 2 seasons this shows some of the best talent I've ever seen both in writing and acting. Almost every episode was remarkably well crafted. The main characters were very well formed and expertly well portrayed. Especially Dar and Tao. This show teaches us more about the world and shows us how truly human-like animals really are. This summary doesn't speak for the 3rd season because to me the third season simply wasn't that good. The show had lost it's focus both on the animals and the people. At that point it became pure good vs. evil and lost it's appeal. But I still love the show and stand by what i said:this show truly is the best and only one of it's kind!

It was rather campy with ridiculous plots that only children would appreciate, but I do miss this show. I kept watching episodes repeat until I started to wonder why they were going back to the beginning. I finally found out that it was canceled due to production issues and not ratings. Daniel Goddard is stunning on screen, but his character seemed very much like Kevin Sorbo's Hercules rendition. They were both very sensitive, hunky, muscular males who could kick butt when it came down to it. They're also extremely monogamous and don't seem to want to move past the women they were once in love with to venture into anything new.

I found the opening credits vastly amusing. It amps it up a lot and then you're like, "Oooh! Who is this guy?" and then the announcer says quite blandly, "He's the Beastmaster. He communicates with animals." It was so anti-climatic, it was comical. That's his specialty? Talking to animals? So he's an ancient vet? Eh, I watched anyway. His sidekick was more annoying that Gabrielle in Xena. And the heavy surfer, Californian accent was a little off in this ancient environment. I loved the character of Arina and wished she and Dar would hook up, but it got canceled before old lover boy would make a move. Heck, the way he was moving, his ferrets woulda got to her before he did.

The plots were childish, as I've said, but you still watched because it was just a way to kick back and enjoy a Saturday afternoon, no stress. It didn't require heavy thinking on my part. It also might have grown into a pretty strong show that tested waters, but it didn't last. Ah, it's OK, but you feel bad for the actors. It's like they may never get another break with this show gone. I remember those episodes with the original Beastmaster and I found him terribly annoying. I'm not surprised his movies didn't work out majorly. I caught sight of one of his versions and detested him. Daniel was better. Ah, so's the TV world.

After having watched the show in re-runs for a couple of years, I recently purchased "Season One." This series possesses many wonderful qualities that appear to set it apart from Hercules and Zena and similar epics. Some of the uniqueness lies in the very ethereal quality present in the beautiful rain forest settings that play a very prominent role in almost every episode. This feature is sometimes juxtaposed against the human characters in very original and highly effective visual presentations. A wonderful example being the opening sequence to the episode "A simple truth" wherein a wolf is being pursued by a hunter who in turn is being pursued by Dar. There is a multitude of mini-shots of the three characters moving in unison toward a common destination in the heart of the rain forest setting. The combined effect of the photographic sequencing provides a stunning pictogram depicting the the show's essential theme of one man's struggle against another to save the animal kingdom.

The story lines encapsulate a wide variety of mythologies and legends from around the world; nymphs, minotaurs, chameleons, amazons, elves and unicorns are but a few examples of the characters used to illustrate the individual productions. These characters often come to life through a remarkable collection of highly entertaining, exotic personages. A prime example is Grace Jones' portrayal as a solo animal hunter in "The Umpatra." Displaying an innate sense of cunning and ferocious fighting spirit, both humans and immortals are on guard as she finally begins hand to hand combat with Dar. The eventual revelation of the Umpatra's erroneous perception and subsequent disclosure of the "truth" culminates with her own self imposed demise. This is a common lesson throughout the series as many of the "unenlightened" eventually gain a greater understanding and respect for the inherent balance between man and nature.

Another unusual quality is the slow, deliberate phrasing evident in the many heart to heart philosophical discussions, especially between Dar and those closest to him and also the Sorceress and the astute Ancient One. The unique phrasing combined with the slow and deliberate eye contact adds a sensual and highly effective edge to the communication between the characters who lived long ago in "an age when nature and magic ruled the world."

In every episode the viewer is presented with another example of Dar's untiring devotion and loyalty to the animals and their welfare. A devotion that is very effectively portrayed. Daniel Goddard plays the character as a somewhat more serious, intense Beastmaster than Marc Singer did in the original feature film and this new persona seems very effective and well suited for the television version. The actors' various styles are at times interestingly comparable because of Marc Singer's occasional guest appearances as Dartanus, Dar's spirit guide.

The show's simple but poignant message of good-will to earth's creatures, philosophical story lines and stunning photography make it a beautiful and uplifting television series.

As some might think this Beastmaster version not dark as or enough considering the original movie it comes from I must disagree feeling it has very good and thought provoking points in relation to the movie and that the movie could not explore.

Daniel Goddard is perfectly cast as a new model Beastmaster a little more officially muscled while Marc Singer muscled enough the original and movie Beastmaster was also just plain imposing in such a way you might feel he could defend the toughest tiger or lion. Daniel Goddard makes up for this in the muscle of his build in relation to the animals he cares for and tries to save from harm avoiding conflict if possible.

Beastmaster, the series, is worthy to be called so in relation to the movie and Marc Singer if for no other reason than the complimentary to each other comparison and the exploration of love, care, and issues of animals and man in the resistance of evil for the cause of good. The series is also well filmed and looks great too, a style all its' own. I for one am sorry it could not get a couple of more seasons into the can much is missing those seasons might have included.

BeastMaster is not about intelligent writing or good acting necessarily, its about the tight bodied , half naked blond hottie who runs around in it. That is why I watch it. It is good eye candy to aspire to before I go to the gym. And I also watch carefully for homoerotic subtext which despite what any blind eyed teenage girl might tell you, is definitely there. You don't have to dive for it. I could certainly watch this show on mute and miss nothing.

THE BEASTMASTER (the original 1982 film) was and still remains a childhood favorite of mine. When I heard of a series, I was naturally excited. Then I saw the premiere, and had to laugh. Though supposedly produced by one of the guys involved with the film, the show itself isn't much like the film at all, with the only similarity being a guy named Dar who can communicate with animals. Even the backstory of Dar was changed. Also, thanks to the type of fantasy shows produced in the wake of the HERCULES and XENIA series, THE BEASTMASTER became just another typical, corny, lame, lackluster series that could never be found because of its ever-changing schedule, which is just as well. Dar, a muscular tough guy in the films, becomes a slim beach-blonde surfer dude from Malibu (no disrespect to the actor, since it was the producers who made the character like this) who encounters everything from jungle woman to creatures who looks like (and, knowing this type of show, probably are) from space or another dimension. The dark, brooding aspect of the film is instead replaced with a "hip" sensibility meant to attract a young audience, which has probably never even heard of the film. I can't believe the show is still on, though I really couldn't care any less. It's a terrible show, but at least it can never take away my fondness for the original (and much superior) film.

This is something along the lines of the late night Sheena and rejected episodes of Hercules/Xena. Lousy and cheesy world with nonsense plot. How do inhabitants living in a tropical enviroment be blonde and pale? Why does a Beastmaster own a steel weapon (His plastic halberd turns into a magical sword, haha) when it is against his belief system? Steel is supposed to be an affront to nature (anyone with some fantasy knowledge will know this) in their POV.

Oh well if you like woman in skimpy clothing and hard bodies, this is yet another show which deals exclusively with that.

like many other series about sorcery and generosity, it is a seductive fairy tale. not original but using a generous idea. and proposing the autonomy of the each episode, fight scenes and the idea of love for the nature and the links with the animals. Daniel Goddart does a good job. but in few episodes it is not enough for save a story who becomes only sketch of the battle between the past of a young hero and the dark universe of evil looking to dominate entire world. so, a nice series who could be better with a little effort. this is all. important is the flavor of freedom, dedication and protect of the nature. the communion with the entire creation. and the portrait of hope for the contemporary world. all in the images of a parable about power and noble purposes.

I saw the movie when i was in high school and i was impressed but I think this show was more like Hercules or Xena than the Beastmaster.First Dar was the long lost son of a king not a lone survivor of a tribe.They make Dar to be more of a wanderer than a warrior in this show.Next I think Marc Singer should have reprised the role.Now I know he's getting too old but he was much better than this Australian guy they chose to replace or succeed him with.Singer did do a good job with his role in the last few episodes and that's the only part I like about this show .Next one of the ferret's died with Rip Torn in the first movie.Sure this Daniel Goddard has some talent and is a promising actor but this role is not for him.Next hat happened to Kiri from the first movie.I wish she would make a guest appearance played by Tanya Roberts of course.Also whatever happened to Tal,I wish we could have seen him make at least a cameo appearance.Finally the symbol on palm of Dar's hand isn't the same symbol as in the movie plus it's on the opposite hand in the TV series.I do however think it was better than most reality show that are on nowadays and give it credit for following the novel a little more than the film though.Word of advice watch this show if you're bored.