You Should Be Watching Amazon’s ‘Reacher,’ Finally, A Book-Faithful Adaptation

Jack Reacher is one of the most beloved characters in modern mystery fiction, a burly ex-Military Police investigator initially accused of murder himself, who goes on to solve all number of crimes across a large collection of Lee Child novels.

Now, Amazon Prime has just debuted Reacher, its new show based on the first book in the series, and one that’s meant to be a sort of redemption from the last time this was attempted, where Reacher was played by Tom Cruise. Across two films (I did not even realize there was a second until I was writing this), Cruise was cast as Reacher, and while the movies were…fine, fans of the books always lamented that the no-more-than-5’7” Cruise was playing a man who was in many ways defined by his immense physicality.

Well, meet Alan Ritchson.

Some of you may know Ritchson from his time at Blue Mountain State a decade ago. I know him mainly from Titans, the DC series where he played superhero Hawk, recently exited so he could go on and star in Reacher.

A role, I’d argue, he was born to play.

Ritchson does a phenomenal job in Reacher as the titular character. Yes, he’s got the size. I mean truly, this guy is enormous, and any complaints I’ve seen about his appearance are maybe that he’s just not disheveled enough. But it’s more than just the look. He’s got the necessary attitude and personality down as well, and I think for the most part, fans of Jack Reacher from the books are going to love Ritchson’s portrayal here.

That’s already bearing out in early reviews of Reacher, which appears to be shaping up to be a needed hit for Amazon, a streaming service that has struggled to find all that many major hits to keep up with rivals like Netflix and HBO. For every instance of The Boys and Ms. Maisel it has, it goes for long dry periods without much else on the originals front. Well, I think Reacher is going to be a new weapon in its arsenal going forward. Lord knows there’s enough source material to keep this going forever with 26 books and counting.

Reacher has an 87% on Rotten Tomatoes from critics, and a 94% audience score, extremely good in that department. It also boasts an impressive 8.8 on IMDB. That’s enough to put it in the top 50 series ever, if that number holds.

I have two episodes left to go, but given that I’ve seen the first movie and also read the book before that, I’m not exactly needing to wait and see how it plays out. But I have seen enough of Ritchson and his supporting cast to say that yes, this is the adaptation this character needed, and Amazon has opened up a nearly endless supply of content going forward now that this has demonstrated it’s going to work. I look forward to many more seasons to come, no doubt.

Follow me on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. Subscribe to my free weekly content round-up newsletter, God Rolls.

Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.