Before Game of Thrones: George R.R. Martin's Fantasy Roots in Beauty and the Beast

Long before dragons ruled the skies of Westeros and the Iron Throne became television's most coveted seat, George R.R. Martin was honing his craft on a very different kind of fantasy series. The 1987 CBS show Beauty and the Beast may not have the name recognition of Game of Thrones, but it was crucial in shaping Martin as a television writer—and it remains a cult classic that was decades ahead of its time.

A Beast in the Tunnels

When you hear "Beauty and the Beast," you probably think of medieval castles, talking candlesticks, or perhaps Disney's animated classic. Martin's version threw all those expectations out the window and relocated the fairy tale to present-day New York City—specifically, to the tunnels beneath Manhattan.

Linda Hamilton, fresh off her role in The Terminator, played Catherine, a lawyer who becomes the victim of mistaken identity. Attacked and left for dead in Central Park, she's rescued by Vincent—a lion-faced man with a gentle soul played by Ron Perlman. Vincent takes her to his secret home: a community of social outcasts living in old tunnels and caverns beneath the city, where he nurses her back to health.

This wasn't your typical network television premise. As Martin recalled, "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."

Martin's Television Apprenticeship

Martin came to Beauty and the Beast already carrying substantial literary credentials. Throughout the 1970s and '80s, he'd written science fiction novels and short stories that earned Hugo and Nebula Award nominations and victories. These successes led to a writing role on CBS's 1985 Twilight Zone reboot, which served as his entry into television.

On Beauty and the Beast, Martin took on even more responsibility, serving as a producer and personally writing over a dozen episodes across the show's three seasons. It was here that he learned the rhythms of television production, the art of serialized storytelling, and how to balance episodic structure with longer narrative arcs—skills that would prove essential when adapting A Song of Ice and Fire for HBO decades later.

"I loved the show," 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."

A Literate Fantasy for Network Television

What made Beauty and the Beast remarkable for its era was its unabashed embrace of literary sophistication. This wasn't fantasy dumbed down for mass audiences. Vincent might have been a beast, but he was highly educated, constantly quoting poetry, citing Shakespeare, and dropping sonnets from various poets into conversation.

"It was such a literate show and such a smart show," Martin explained. The show didn't just reference high culture—it trusted its audience to appreciate it. Martin wrote an episode called "Ozymandias" where Ron Perlman read the entirety of Shelley's famous poem. "To be able to do that kind of thing was amazing, to work in some of the classics of English literature that way."

This commitment to literary depth, combined with the show's blend of melodrama, urban fantasy, crime procedural elements, and stylish cinematography, created something genuinely unique in 1980s television. It was BookTok before BookTok existed, prestige television before that term was coined.

"It was a gorgeous-looking show," Martin added, praising both its visual aesthetics and intellectual ambitions.

The End of the Love Story

Beauty and the Beast ran for three seasons, though the final season was truncated. The show's core appeal—the slow-burn romance between Catherine and Vincent—began to shift, and when Linda Hamilton departed, the series couldn't sustain itself.

"When the love story stopped, our core audience left," Martin acknowledged. The show's final episode aired on August 4, 1990, leaving both the creative team and devoted fans wishing for a more satisfying conclusion.

Despite the less-than-ideal ending, Martin remained proud of what the series accomplished. It proved that network television could take risks on unusual premises. It demonstrated that audiences would embrace literary fantasy if given the chance. And it showed that genre television didn't have to talk down to its viewers.

A Lasting Influence

The legacy of Beauty and the Beast extends beyond nostalgia. The CW rebooted it for four seasons in the 2010s (though that version traded the underground fantasy elements for military sci-fi plotting). More importantly, the show influenced the next generation of fantasy television.

Shows like Xena: Warrior Princess and Buffy the Vampire Slayer followed Beauty and the Beast's template: serialized storytelling, elevated genre aesthetics, and a willingness to tackle serious themes through fantastical premises. The DNA of Vincent's tunnels runs through the Hellmouth beneath Sunnydale.

For Martin personally, the show provided crucial connections. Roy Dotrice, who played Vincent's adoptive father, would later narrate the A Song of Ice and Fire audiobooks. Fellow writers Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa used Beauty and the Beast as a proving ground before going on to create Homeland and 24.

The Seeds of Westeros

Looking back, you can see Game of Thrones gestating in Beauty and the Beast. Both shows asked audiences to invest in fantasy worlds grounded in emotional reality. Both featured outsider communities with their own codes and hierarchies. Both understood that fantasy works best when it explores genuine human (or lion-human) relationships.

Martin's experience balancing episodic television demands with longer character arcs prepared him for the complexities of adapting his novels. His comfort with slow-burn romance translated directly to the relationship between Jaime and Brienne, or Jon and Ygritte. His willingness to kill beloved characters? That may have started when Catherine left the tunnels.

Even the literary pretensions carried over. Game of Thrones was famously bookish, adapting dense novels and trusting viewers to keep track of dozens of characters and complex political machinations. That faith in the audience began with Vincent quoting Shelley in subway tunnels.

Why It Still Matters

Beauty and the Beast remains important not just as a footnote in George R.R. Martin's career, but as an example of what network television could be when it took risks. In an era dominated by sitcoms, police procedurals, and primetime soaps, here was a show about a beast-man living in New York subway tunnels, quoting Romantic poetry to a lawyer he rescued from Central Park.

It shouldn't have worked. Everyone said it wouldn't. But it did—for three seasons and in the memories of fans who still treasure it decades later.

For Martin, it was more than a job. It was an education in television storytelling, a chance to prove genre fiction could be literate and ambitious, and preparation for the phenomenon that would eventually consume his life. Game of Thrones might be his television legacy, but Beauty and the Beast was his training ground.

So next time you're binging House of the Dragon or waiting for The Winds of Winter, remember: before Tyrion quoted Aemon, before Littlefinger's schemes, before any Stark said "Winter is coming," there was Vincent in the tunnels beneath Manhattan, reading Shelley by candlelight and teaching George R.R. Martin how to make fantasy television work.

The beast under the city taught the man who would write about dragons. And television fantasy has never been quite the same.