Brain and brawn

TV se­ries

The British writer Lee Child has pub­lished more than forty nov­els and short sto­ries star­ring Jack Reacher, a huge for­mer US mil­i­tary po­lice of­fi­cer with a very pe­cu­liar code of con­duct, who al­ways ends up fac­ing some crim­i­nal plot. It is a world­wide best-sell­ing phe­nom­e­non, trans­lated into fifty lan­guages, and with hun­dreds of mil­lions of sales.

The char­ac­ter was first brought to the big screen by di­rec­tor Christo­pher Mc­Quar­rie in 2012 in an en­ter­tain­ing film sim­ply ti­tled Jack Reacher and star­ring Tom Cruise. It was based on Lee’s ninth novel, One Shot (2005), one of the most suc­cess­ful of the se­ries. But the choice of Cruise sur­prised more loyal read­ers, as he did not fit the phys­i­cal de­scrip­tion of the char­ac­ter, who is pre­sented as a kind of giant, and we know that Cruise is not ex­actly tall or burly. The film worked, though, and a se­quel was re­leased in 2016, in this case based on the novel Never go back. The re­sponse was not so good, how­ever, and the fran­chise was shelved.

Now the char­ac­ter re­turns in se­ries form on Ama­zon Prime Video. The first sea­son of Reacher con­sists of eight episodes and is an adap­ta­tion of the orig­i­nal novel, Killing Floor, pub­lished in 1997.

“One hun­dred thou­sand years ago there were peo­ple who stayed by the fire and peo­ple who wan­dered. I’m pretty sure I’m a di­rect de­scen­dant of the wan­der­ing type. I’m just who I am“, Reacher says at one point.

Re­tired from the army and deeply marked by mil­i­tary dis­ci­pline, this tough, re­served giant wan­ders the coun­try with no lug­gage, ties or plans. But things get com­pli­cated when, by chance, he ends up in the small town of Mar­grave, Geor­gia, where a mur­der has just taken place. A few hours after get­ting off the bus, Reacher is ac­cused of com­mit­ting the crime and put into prison.

When the ev­i­dence fi­nally al­lows him to be re­leased, Reacher ends up get­ting in­volved in the case, with the head de­tec­tive of the po­lice sta­tion and help from a young of­fi­cer who has be­lieved in his in­no­cence from the be­gin­ning. Lit­tle by lit­tle, the three of them pull the strings of a plot that goes far be­yond the ini­tial homi­cide and in­volves cor­rupt local lead­ers and po­lice, paid for by the most pow­er­ful fam­ily in town.

It’s a thriller that cap­tures the spirit of the book, with Reacher’s char­ac­ter more ac­com­plished than in the movies. Lead Alan Ritch­son man­ages to con­vey the phys­i­cal tough­ness of the lit­er­ary char­ac­ter, but also his great de­duc­tive abil­ity and pe­cu­liar sense of hu­mour. After Tom Cruise’s cin­e­matic mi­rage, Ritch­son (who al­ready ex­celled as the su­per­hero Fal­con in Ti­tans) be­comes the most be­liev­able Reacher for fans. To those not fa­mil­iar with the char­ac­ter, he may seem a lit­tle ex­ag­ger­ated, but the se­ries is one of un­pre­ten­tious ac­tion and in­trigue, and per­haps be­cause of this, it works.