The first season of The Terminal List follows the story of Marine Corps veteran and CIA operative James Reece (played by Jack Bauer himself, Kiefer Sutherland). The first season of The Terminal List is a gripping and harrowing tale of one man’s unraveling after a horrific tragedy.
Critics have praised the show for its tense and claustrophobic atmosphere, as well as its excellent acting. Reece’s life is turned upside down when his family is killed in a terrorist attack that he believes was orchestrated by the government.
Reece sets out on a quest for revenge, using his training and skills to take down those responsible for the attack. The Terminal List is a gripping and action-packed drama that will leave you on the edge of your seat.
Published in 2018, Jack Carr’s debut novel, The Terminal List, became an instant hit, earning early praise and quick readership. A fast-paced, high-octane page-turner filled with pulse-pounding thrills and any number of kills, it’s easy to see why Hollywood wanted to translate the story from the page to the screen.
That’s what we’ll get with Amazon Prime’s TV adaptation — with Carr attached as an executive producer along with Chris Pratt, developer David DiGillo, and Antoine Fuqua.
Especially with Jack Carr’s involvement in this upcoming series, we should expect the streaming show to follow the book’s action-heavy narrative. Or, at the very least, The Terminal List will have his creative input, even if the story veers in a different direction.
The Terminal List Release Date, and More
It sounds like a fun, brutal read, but it’s stretched into a monotonous slog in TV form. The show’s writers are forced to mete out the revelations about Reece’s missions and the obvious corruption underneath in a way that drains the project of any momentum at all.
It becomes a series of brutal action hours, which may be enough for some of the aforementioned “Dad TV” subscribers, but even they will have trouble investing beyond the immediacy in what’s ultimately a hollow piece of storytelling.
It’s the kind of show that plays both “War Pigs” and “Masters of War” on its soundtrack, so subtlety isn’t remotely on the menu, but the show is stubbornly two-dimensional in terms of tone.
One of the reasons “Reacher” is a bit of a hit is because it injects its source material with a sense of humor and willingness to be a little rough around the edges. “The Terminal List” is deadly serious all the time. Admittedly, the action of the end of the series premiere kind of demands that but it makes for a tedious, draining TV experience.
The Terminal List, despite having all of the elements of a high-octane military thriller, doesn’t quite live up to its potential.
Between a lackluster performance from Pratt, a bit of a miss in the motivations of the conspiracy, some scenery-chewing villains, and structural issues with the storytelling, the series feels like an over-earnest clone of every other military crime thriller — and for their time, viewers might be better served with a different one. I hear Jack Reacher’s pretty good.
