Wild New Lee Child Adaptation On Prime Video

Prime Video has released Reacher a new series adaptation of Lee Child’s Killing Floor. With eight episodes, Reacher is an absorbing crime series with some brutally violent action scenes.

Based on Lee Child’s first Jack Reacher novel, Season One of Reacher on Amazon Prime Video introduces viewers to the character of Jack Reacher, who prefers to be called just Reacher, no longer played by Tom Cruise as in the film franchise, but by a hulky Alan Ritchson, who has at least one scene per episode shirtless. In this season of the series, Reacher, a veteran military police investigator, arrives in the small seemingly-quiet town of Margrave, Georgia, to be immediately arrested by the local police as he is about to enjoy a slice of peach pie at the town’s diner. An eyewitness claims to have seen Reacher at the scene of a gruesome crime. The body of a man, shot, beaten up, then covered with a cardboard box was found. As he is the only stranger in town, he is immediately suspected. Reacher must now work to prove his innocence, uncovering a deep-seated conspiracy.  

Written for television by Nick Santora, with Lee Child as one of the executive producers, Reacher is a gripping action series, due largely to Alan Ritchson’s performance as Reacher (and that’s not just because he is shirtless at some point in every episode).

The series quickly establishes Reacher’s character as someone who never goes unnoticed. He is the biggest person in any room, as well as the strongest and the smartest. He is a lone drifter with quite the impressive military background. His character is introduced as both enigmatic and intriguing. With its eight episodes, the series takes its time in uncovering who this mysterious six-foot tall veteran with unparalleled fighting skills is. The series is as much about revealing who Reacher is, as it is concerned with solving the crime at its center.

The crime itself will turn out to be personally connected to Reacher, the drifter who just happened to stop by Margrave. Much like the book, this series is slow in unraveling its plot. With eight almost one-hour-long episodes, the series has plenty of space to tell Child’s story. Much like the main character, the viewer is kept in the dark as to the details of the crime he is accused of in the first episode. Reacher soon finds himself in a prison cell with the man who has confessed to the murder Reacher was arrested for. Reacher is forced to investigate the case to clear himself, and once he finds that it was his own brother who was murdered, he now needs to solve the crime to avenge his brother’s death.

Police chief Oscar Finlay (Malcolm Godwin), who arrested him, and police officer Roscoe Conklin (Willa Fitzgerald) become his allies in the investigation. Roscoe soon becomes Reacher’s love interest, while the series makes sure to point out that she is an independent woman, and not a damsel in distress that Reacher needs to save. A strange relationship between Reacher and Finlay installs itself, pulling between outright animosity and friendship. There is an attempt at humor and banter between Reacher and Finlay which feels at times a little clunky. Each keeps repeating the words the other has said, to ridicule one another. It is fun at first, but when one starts repeating phrases the other said when the two were not together at the time, this ongoing “gag” in the series loses its charm pretty quickly.

Season One of Reacher is essentially a story about revenge. The underlying theme of this story—if you take away the action sequences and the murder investigation which turns into the uncovering of a nationwide conspiracy—appears to be loss. The three main characters of this series, Reacher, Finlay and Roscoe, have all suffered the loss of a loved one, each grieving in their own way. For Reacher, it triggers flashbacks of his childhood and his close connection to his older brother. Most intriguing is Finlay’s own grief, and the reason why a Harvard police officer has found himself in a small Georgian town. While Reacher faces head on his brother’s death with a plan to avenge him, Finlay ran away from his hometown in an attempt to evade his grief.

The new series Reacher, on Prime Video since February 4, is an entertaining, if brutally violent, adaptation of Lee Child’s book that stays faithful to its story and the portrayal of its main character.