• Network: UPN
  • Series Premiere Date: Jan 11, 2006
  • Season #: 1
Metascore
29 out of 100

Generally unfavorable - based on 18 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 2 out of 18
  2. Negative: 14 out of 18
  1. 63
    "South Beach" isn't the terrible waste of viewing time a cynic might expect. But it is a conventionally drawn, sudsy soap.
  2. 63
    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.
  3. 60
    Serious about its silliness, this show grasps the concept of prime time as vacation time.
  4. 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]
  5. 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.
  6. 38
    Tawdry, empty and inept, South Beach is UPN's too-late-in-the-game attempt to transfer The O.C. to the other coast.
  7. 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.
  8. Reviewed by: Mary Colgan
    20
    Despite the many hard bodies on display, South Beach is flabby.
  9. [A] warmed-over hip-hop saga.
  10. 20
    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.
  11. "South Beach" could fall into guilty pleasure territory, but it really is as corny as it sounds.
  12. 20
    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.
  13. Filled with terrible dialogue.
  14. 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.
  15. 10
    The dialogue and plot contrivances are banal, the acting is cartoon and the whole thing is more transparent than a see-through bikini.
  16. Reviewed by: Phil Gallo
    10
    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.
  17. 10
    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.
  18. 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.
User Score

Universal acclaim- based on 79 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 56 out of 61
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 61
  3. Negative: 5 out of 61
  1. BrookeJ.
    10
    OF COURSE the show was TERRIFIC!!!! I am head over heels in love with it and believe me it was one of the best shows I have ever seen.Come on tell me that somebody didn't love it and I am going to say that he was crazy.bring it back to us.PLEASE!Matt+Arielle=forever together!!! Full Review »
  2. MalcolmB.
    9
    I think it's a really good show, if you look past the cliches and stuff, it's way cooland hey i think it's better than the o.c, so just to give support to the dead and buried, here: a 9/10 Full Review »
  3. BrittneyB.
    10
    I absolutely loved this show, personally I don't know why they decided to cancel this show either. I felt that this show was like no other show on the UPN network or the CW network. I also loved the cast on there, especially Lee Thompson Young who played (Alex Burer). Full Review »