Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

Absolutely the worst movie.

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

I'm writing this review 25 years after it left the air. I have never forgotten it. It is superb television. The ensemble cast is stellar. It was co-written by John Sacret Young and William Dodson "Bill" Broyles, Jr. who served as a marine in Vietnam. While watching it, it made me intensely feel what it was like to be there; I could feel how every moment and every individual counts. I could also feel how relationships are exquisite and intense when you daily face life or death. Conversely, their lives were also portrayed after the war when they returned home where they were no longer making a big difference in the world; there I could feel just how empty, inane, and futile their existence felt in comparison to their lives at China Beach.

China Beach was one of the most powerful shows ever to hit television. Based on real vets and nurses (see the episode "Vets"), this show was the most realistic portrayal of the people who served in that horrible place and nothing else has come close. MASH was on for 11 seasons, but MASH wasn't exactly honest (after all, the movie was about Viet Nam, but to avoid reality and emotion they made the TV show about Korea).During the third season word got out that the show was to be cancelled. Letters poured into ABC to save the show. Thousands of fans wrote in (including me), but all it did was guarantee a final season. For reasons never disclosed or understood the show was cancelled. There has been a campaign to get the show onto DVD, but to no avail. China Beach was an incredible look at a horrendous place, at a horrendous time. It helped heal vets and helped families torn apart by an atrocity understand (a little) about what the bloody hell happened over there. No show has ever been that honest. It astonishes me that an idiotic show like "The Simpsons" manages to stay on TV forever (18 seasons - enough already!) and a powerfully moving show like China Beach is on for only 4 seasons.

This is one of the all-time best series of the past or present TV era. A lot has been said of Dana Delany so I shall not do it again yet must say it all is true! I would like to give a different approach. I am a Viet Nam veteran from the area this film was about and I have been to the China Beach in 1969 and again in 1994. I served as a young officer operating with the Vietnamese as an "advisor".This series was gut-wrenching at times, calming at others, as I had been wounded there and remember not my doctors but the nurses I dealt with. This is a great series that displays the crap that is war and the compassion displayed by many to the unlucky that have felt the full fury of conflict. If one gets a chance to watch this series, do so as it now is out on DVD. Reality TV is a farce!!! This series presents many of the "realities" of this unpopular conflict as well as the generosity of simple things. Bravo Dana, and all your fellow actresses and actors who gave so much to make the series what it was; believable!! Thank you.

I was eleven when I started watching this show, and it left an indelible impression on me. I was watching a lot of shows back then that I was probably too young to watch(!), and there was a lot of stuff I didn't get, but I knew, even as a middle schooler, that "China Beach" was something special. A few months ago I started borrowing videotaped episodes from a friend (thank you, History Channel!), and re-experiencing it. While, at times, it's cheesier than I remembered it (and that was mostly just in some season 1 episodes), you can't do better than Marg Helgenberger and Dana Delany and Jeff Kober as K.C., McMurphy, and Dodger (respectively). The dialogue is great, but there's so much said in just a look, and that, my friends, is acting. There was really something special going on in that show. I think it was partly the subject matter and the shooting everything(?) on location (as opposed to a sound stage -- I know it wasn't shot in Vietnam ;)), but it felt so deceptively REAL... Anyway, I couldn't love it more, and I've never seen another show like it. My thanks to the producers and writers and crew (and, of course, the actors!) -- you all should be really proud of what you did.