• Photo Courtesy Of Amazon Studios and Blackjack Films Inc.
• DETERMINATION After his brother is murdered, former major in the U.S. Army Military Police Corps Jack Reacher (Alan Ritchson, left) teams with local police detective Oscar Finlay (Malcolm Goodwin) to find the killers, in Season 1 of Reacher.

What's it rated? TV-MA

When? 2022

Where's it showing? Amazon Prime

Lee Child has penned 26 novels about Jack Reacher, a former military officer who travels the U.S. seeking out and correcting injustice, so there's a lot of material to mine for this new TV series starring Alan Ritchson as the towering, unstoppable Reacher. In Season 1, creator Nick Santora adapts the series' 1997 debut novel, Killing Floor, which opens with Reacher arriving in Margrave, Georgia, only to be promptly arrested for murder.

The book series and this new TV show are pure male fantasy, as are the two Tom Cruise films—Jack Reacher (2012) and Jack Reacher: Never Go Back (2016). Reacher operates by a code of honor that defines his character. He owns nothing, travels by Greyhound bus, and is a bit like a Ronin, a masterless samurai whose only responsibility is to seek truth and justice. I liked both the Cruise films, but he was criticized for not capturing Reacher's physicality and towering 6-foot-6 frame. The yoked 6-foot-4 Ritchson seems right for the character but isn't nearly as good an actor as Cruise.

If you like these types of stories, as I do, you'll probably be able to forgive the wooden acting and become absorbed as Reacher works with local police officers Oscar Finlay (Malcolm Goodwin) and Roscoe Conklin (Willa Fitzgerald) to ferret out small-town corruption. (eight approximately 50-min. episodes) Δ