When I first got the recommendation from Hulu to check out "The Beast", and I saw that it had Patrick Swayze in it, my thoughts went back to "Ghost". I thought it would be lame, but I decided to give it a shot. Let me get my complaint out of the way first. The synopsis said that Swayze's character avoided all the cliches of the cop who operates on the edge of the law. Wrong. It's a rather played out plot line. Having said that, I give this show five stars. It blows all the other "edgy cop" flicks out of the water. First, it's hard to know, until the end, who to believe. You want to believe in Barker, but he has that feel about him. And you're always afraid that Ellis is going to screw the pooch, but he comes through. The two of them work well together. The treatment of the rookie by the wise mentor is a bit overdone at times, but you don't feel like Barker is belittling Ellis, just challenging him to make him better. I give props to the writers for keeping the series plot, but also making each episode unique. They also do a good job of keeping up the suspense. It's hard to tell sometimes when a plan is going haywire, or if that was the intention all along. I would compare this show to the series "Justified". I think it's on FX. As other reviewers have pointed out, Swayze was fighting cancer while making this series. I have a great deal of respect for him. It's hard to look at a lot of the actors today, who complain when their latte isn't hot enough, when there are veterans who do what they do because it's their passion. That's my two cents anyway. I wish the series could have gone on, but really once it reached the conclusion, any further episodes would probably drift further into cliche land. Thank you Patrick, and Travis, for a great series.