'Reacher' - season one review.

So when it comes to my tv watching habits, I haven't recently been watching almost anything on television. Especially when we're talking about drama shows, lately there hasn't been pretty much any shows that I have found to be worth my time. 

Indeed, most drama shows that you see on tv - as unfortunate as it is - are so badly written and so uninteresting that I'm just not able to stomach them. There's almost zero chance that watching them would make me feel better about myself or life in general.

At the same time, every now and then, if there's enough hype for a show, I might give the series a chance. This is what happened with the freshly released 'Reacher', a show that I felt it could be worth my time, since I had seen clips from the Tom Cruise 'Reacher' films.

So having now seen the first season of this Amazon Prime series, I have to say that I had a mostly positive experience watching 'Reacher'. The show was pretty well made and interesting, even though - not surprisingly - as a writer I had some issues with its story.

Premise-wise, what we're dealing here is that our protagonist is Jack Reacher, a massively built army major, who lives his life as a vagrant. He doesn't have a permanent place to live and instead goes where he feels his services might be needed (like Incredible Hulk).

Indeed, in this story he's on personal mission trying to figure out what happened to his brother and why he died in a small town in the state of Georgia. Something fairly big must have likely been happening there and he's determined to get to the bottom of it. 

Not surprisingly, as a man who knows how to use his big physique when needed, it won't take long before he gets into action. The locals, cops, business elite and others are determined to stop him from unveiling the mystery of what's going on.

Luckily, as the story progresses, he doesn't have to do everything by himself. Together with the help of a local head of a police department (Malcolm Goodwin) and a female police officer (Will Fitzgerald), they team up, even though the odds seem to be heavily against them.

Quality-wise, there's no question that one of the best things about 'Reacher' is that Alan Ritchson genuinely fits the part. Unlike Tom Cruise in Lee Child's books, Ritchson, besides being a solid actor, is actually a big guy who feels intimidating size-wise.

Indeed, as he almost from the very first moment starts beating up bad guys, it feels rather enjoyable to watch the stuff. I was surprised how much I - as a person who in general is against violence - managed to find these fight scenes satisfying and even worth cheering for.

Production-wise, when it comes to the positive aspects of the series, it has to be said that 'Reacher' is well shot and looks good. It's clear that a lot of attention was paid to making sure that the production values would be high enough and that the series wouldn't look cheap.

Script- and story-wise, the few problems that I had with the first season was that it definitely took too long for the audience and for the characters to know what's going on. The conspiracy of a local / international counterfeit ring felt a bit lacking.

After all, drama-wise, when almost every episode (eight of them total) started with someone getting killed and we didn't really know what was going on, it was a bit frustrating. As a writer, I wasn't always feeling super confident that the story would actually go somewhere.  

Still, once we finally got to the conclusion of the season, I guess the story was explained 'almost' adequately. These flaws that were sometimes rather apparent with the narrative (from a professional viewpoint), didn't prevent me from enjoying the series too much. 

In that sense, in the end, when it comes to the question of whether you should the show a chance at some point, I think you should probably give 'Reacher' a go. You should watch it and not be discouraged by the original author's 'not quality fiction' reputation.

After all, even though the story could have been better and more believable, I would recommend the series as a whole. 'Reacher' is a watchable and immersive show, especially for those who want to be entertained and don't want to watch something that is 'too' serious.