I put the first episode of Reacher yesterday not expecting much and I ended up bingeing the whole season in one seating. Prefacing this by saying that I’m among the rare few who, despite reading the series, were not put out by Tom Cruise’s performance in the movie adaptations (or even the choice of having him in the first place), the 2022 show is pretty solid and I will agree that it is more faithful to how the book depicted the character. Alan Ritchson’s Reacher is not just greatly layered, he’s also great at showing these layers gradually, playing on the other characters’ expectations (and in some way also those of the ones among the audience who don’t know the books). Reacher is an enigma when you first meet him, but the core elements of his character are never in doubt, and the first episodes establishes that perfectly by having him say absolutely nothing in the first ten minutes or so, yet show both where his moral compass points to and how skilled he is at what he does. And while he is a nigh-unstoppable powerhouse with Holmesian-level deductive skills, he’s also sufficiently reliant on others during the course of the series that he doesn’t quite become the Gary Sue one could mistake him to be at first glance.

The supporting cast also does a bang up job, Willa Fitzgerald as the tough-as-nails Roscoe and Malcolm Goodwin as the uptight by-the-book Finlay, alongside veteran actors like Currie Graham and Bruce McGill for the antagonists. The setting brilliantly reeks of “small town with a dark secret” from the very beginning (a staple of the book series) and the whole fun is to entangle what that secret is, and the twists make it very worthwhile at the same time as they make it very, very personal for Reacher, something the baddies painfully discover is definitely something you never want to face.

All in all, this adaptation is a very pleasant surprise, moreso than Jack Ryan, also on Prime and for which I had similarly subverted expectations. The 8-episode format allows writers and actors the time and space to really explore and develop the characters in a way that feels natural and organic, establish the backstories, introduce foes, allies and folks in between without rushing through the motions, play with the uncertainty of knowing who’s with or against our protagonist…

With a whole book series to choose from, if they can keep up that level of care for the source material, I’ll be looking forward to future seasons.

I finished watching “Away” yesterday, after starting it over the weekend. It’s a Netflix original show, starring Hillary Swank, about the first manned mission to Mars.

(this review contains spoilers)

It’s not bad, but it’s not great. I really had difficulty with suspending disbelief as the high-rate sci-fi is bogged down by ridiculous melodrama. It’s ostensibly the goal of the series to show how such a trip and the isolation it entails might affect both the crews out there and the families, friends and coworkers on Earth, but it was really hard to swallow. And it was particularly egregious in the very first episode, which almost made me quit. I simply cannot believe that a crew that trained together for two years or more would behave like this, let alone 24 hours into the mission. And some of their subsequent behavior was also incredibly unprofessional.

I also don’t believe that NASA would kickoff the manned mission without making sure that the Pegasus resupply ship had landed safely.

Other than, that it was… okay. I do like that the characters had a fully fleshed out background, each with their unique perspective, and the cast is great. Also as mentioned, the production value is stellar (no pun intended). The zero-G is extremely well done and only a few details (like tears) betray the artifice. It’s just a shame that the script is lacking.

I’ll be on the lookout if there’s a Season 2, but I’m not on the edge of my seat. Like “Amelia” (also with Hillary Swank), it feels a bit like a missed opportunity.