David Schwimmer's Post-Friends Crime Drama Series Was Panned By Critics

When NBC's wildly successful "Friends" came to an end in 2004, it would be a good twelve years before David Schwimmer would become a series regular on another TV show. In 2016, he committed to two crime dramas: "American Crime Story" and "Feed the Beast." The former was a critical success, but the latter, unfortunately, was not.

AMC's "Feed the Beast" — a 10-episode series based on the Danish program "Bankerot" — revolves around two best friends taking one last shot at opening an upscale Greek restaurant in the Bronx. Schwimmer plays Tommy Moran, a drunken sommelier raising his mute son following the tragic death of his wife. During the show's press tour, Schwimmer seemed genuinely enthusiastic about the premise. "I thought, 'Wow, this is something I've just never seen,'" he told ABC News. "If we could pull it off that would be something else." Unfortunately, in the eyes of critics, they didn't pull it off. "Feed the Beast" went on to earn a disappointing 23% critics' score on Rotten Tomatoes.

TVLine noted that "a few portions of the pilot are a little difficult to digest," adding that "Tommy's glumness is so unrelenting that TJ's vow of silence seems a little too understandable." Entertainment Weekly observed that the series' attempts to juggle two wildly different narratives — Tommy's earnest grief and Dion's seedy criminal misadventures — resulted in a mismatched story that failed to come together effectively.

That lukewarm critical reception ultimately led to "Feed the Beast" being canceled after one season, with AMC citing low ratings. In a statement (via Deadline), the network thanked Schwimmer and the cast and crew for their work, but added that "the show simply didn't achieve the results needed to move forward with a second season."

The cancellation probably wasn't much of a surprise for Schwimmer, though. While he loved the key elements that made up "Feed the Beast," you can tell that he knew it might not click with American audiences. He told IndieWire that he fell in love with the show's tone, citing the allure of playing a single father "who's trying to pick himself up" as a major drawing point. "I really like the backstory of the character," Schwimmer said. "For Tommy, it's a guy who's among the dead and it's really about pulling him back into the world of the living."

While praising the original Danish version, however, he told The Guardian, "This is going to be tricky for an American audience to get ... there is such a sweet spot for a show that is this dark and dramatic, darkly funny, has all this violent crime and then cooking." The series is not without its fans, though. Even though critics were unkind, "Feed the Beast" still holds a satisfactory 77% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes.