Although Reacher is great, the show is missing the global scope of Prime Video’s other massive action thriller franchise. Prime Video’s action thriller shows are among the best on streaming. Not only is the streaming service home to The Terminal List franchise, but Prime Video’s most successful action thriller show, Reacher, has spawned a spinoff, consistently impressed critics, and broken viewer records with each new season since its 2022 debut. A perfect vehicle for star Alan Ritchson, Reacher is based on author Lee Child’s novel series of the same name.
The titular hulking hero is a drifter who travels throughout the US, uprooting criminal conspiracies, trafficking rings, and corrupt police departments wherever he roams, and dispensing his unique brand of brutal justice to the perpetrators of these crimes. Reacher’s popularity means it is already renewed for a further two seasons, and there are over 30 books in Child’s source novel series, meaning the show could theoretically last for decades. However, there is still one thing that the series is missing.
Reacher rarely travels outside the US, and this means the scope of the series is relatively parochial. In many ways, this makes Child’s achievements all the more impressive. The story of Reacher season 1 never leaves a small-town setting, but, like Netflix’s Rebel Ridge, the action thriller is just as gripping as any globe-trotting thriller. However, for viewers who like their spy stories to have a little more in the way of map hopping, Prime Video’s earlier Jack Ryan franchise is a superior fit.
Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan Has A Global Scope That Reacher Lacks
Starring The Office’s John Krasinski as the eponymous CIA operative, a former desk jockey who inadvertently becomes a field agent in season 1, Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan pulls off the classic action thriller formula on a much bigger scale than Reacher. While Reacher, by design, is more self-contained and character-driven, Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan sees its title character travel from Venezuela to the Czech Republic to many more far-flung locations depending on the villains he is pursuing.
Closer in style to Taylor Sheridan’s Lioness than Reacher, this isn’t a show about a lone wolf who plays by his own rules. Ryan relies on his colleagues in the CIA and the organization itself, which gives the show a much bigger canvas to paint on as he travels all over the world as part of his many missions. Even compared to Harrison Ford’s earlier ‘90s movies in the role of Jack Ryan, this series jumps all over the world in pursuit of danger.
Reacher’s Comparatively Small Scale Was A Welcome Change For The Action Genre
While Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan can be a lot of fun, it is not surprising that viewers gravitated toward Reacher when the show premiered on Prime Video. Only a year later, the spy series Citadel attempted to replicate the appeal of Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan and fell flat with both viewers and critics despite its massive budget since plenty of existing spy franchises already have this sort of international adventurism covered.
Since action thriller movies tend to have bigger budgets than TV shows, they are often better suited to stories of globe-spanning intrigue than comparatively small-scale streaming productions. Admittedly, Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan worked around this with a big budget, but Reacher resonated precisely because it had been a while since viewers saw a classic soldier-of-fortune action thriller show like The Incredible Hulk or The A-Team, where a highly skilled hero moved from town to town solving crimes.
In many ways, this format resembles police procedurals like Prime’s hit Bosch as much it does spy movies like the James Bond franchise, and this is precisely why Reacher proved so popular. Although Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan has an ambitious scope for its story, Reacher’s limited ambition makes its plot feel more intimate, immediate, and high-stakes.
- Release Date
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2018 – 2023-00-00
- Network
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Prime Video
- Showrunner
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Carlton Cuse
- Directors
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Jann Turner, Andrew Bernstein, Dennie Gordon, Kevin Dowling, Lukas Ettlin, Patricia Riggen, David Petrarca, Phil Abraham, Carlton Cuse, Morten Tyldum
- Writers
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Amy Berg, Dario Scardapane, Nolan Dunbar, Vince Calandra, David Graziano, Steven Kane, Marc Halsey, Robert Port