George R.R. Martin Got His Start On A Hit Fantasy Show Starring Ron Perlman And Linda Hamilton

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These days, George R. R. Martin's legacy is inexorably tied to the "Song of Ice and Fire" franchise, thanks in large part to the success of HBO's "Game of Thrones." Many ignore his larger body of work, which is substantial. Best known for fantasy now, Martin, wrote a number of science fiction novels and shorter stories in the 1970s and '80s, earning nominations and even victories at the Hugo and Nebula Awards. These successes led up to a writing role on the 1985 "Twilight Zone" reboot that ran on CBS, and when that was up, Martin took an even larger position on another speculative series for the network.

That series, 1987's "Beauty and the Beast," isn't at all what you might expect after hearing the name. Yes, it's based on the same story about a young woman and a beast-like man with a gentle soul falling in love. But rather than being set in medieval France, or some second-world fantasy landscape, the series took place in present-day New York City. Recent "Terminator" alum Linda Hamilton played the beauty, a lawyer named Catherine, and Ron Pearlman played Vincent, the beast.

Over the show's three seasons, Martin served as a producer and personally wrote over a dozen episodes. And while the series fizzled in ratings toward the end, it remains a cult classic today — an anomaly of its era that blended melodrama, urban fantasy, crime serials, and some stylish camerawork to create one of the most unique shows of the 1980s.

Today, the premise of a Beauty and the Beast retelling set in the tunnels under New York, full of slow-burn romance and literary allusions, might not feel so jarring, but it would still be more fitting on BookTok than CBS. The show's pilot episode follows Catherine during a fraught night where, in a case of mistaken identity, she's attacked and left for dead in Central Park, only to be rescued by the lion-faced Vincent. The Beast takes her to his secret home — a community of social outcasts that lives in the old tunnels and caverns beneath Manhattan — where he helps nurse her back to health.

"I loved the show," George R. R. Martin told The Hollywood Reporter in 2017. "We got Ron Perlman and Linda Hamilton — an amazing cast to start with. I think it surprised everybody. Everyone said, 'Well this is a great pilot script, but it's such a weird concept. It will never get picked up to series.' But it did."

Linda Hamilton's departure preceded the show's cancellation after a truncated third season, and the final episode aired on August 4, 1990. "When the love story stopped, our core audience left," Martin explained to The Hollywood Reporter, though he added that the love story wasn't the only reason for the show's success. "It was such a literate show and such a smart show," he said. "Vincent may have been a beast but he was highly read and always fond of quoting poetry and citing Shakespeare and dropping in a sonnet from one poet or another. That had an enormous effect."

Though it didn't quite end the way that Martin or the fans may have wanted, "Beauty and the Beast" remains a beloved show. A reboot ran for four seasons on The CW in the 2010s, though it eschewed the underground fantasy TV show stylings for a more austere military sci-fi plot. For Martin, the series provided more experience in the realm of genre television, while also introducing him to Roy Dotrice, the actor who played Vincent's adoptive father and who would later narrate the "Song of Ice and Fire" audiobooks.

In addition to Martin, the show was a proving ground for TV writers Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa, who went on to do major work on acclaimed shows like "Homeland" and "24." Pearlman and Hamilton, already notable names, continued to be major stars, and the series' blend of serialized storytelling and more elevated genre aesthetics would continue into the '90s on shows like "Xena: Warrior Princess" and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer."

"It was a gorgeous-looking show," Martin told The Hollywood Reporter in 2017. "I was able to do an episode called 'Ozymandias' where we had Ron Perlman read the entirety of the poem by Shelley. To be able to do that kind of thing was amazing, to work in some of the classics of English literature that way."