While Amazon Prime would, of course, like to be seen as a one-stop shop for all kinds of content (and like its competitors, the headache-inducing number of shows and films being spewed out does mean that there really is something for everyone), there has become a notably strange sweet spot for the streamer. The retailer’s first show might have been Joey Soloway’s intimate family drama Transparent, exploring gender and sexuality with sensitivity, and its most awarded might be The Marvelous Mrs Maisel, a female-fronted comedy about female comedy, what’s being most watched continues to be a very different story.
For it’s the red-blooded, dad-would-like action narratives that seem to have connected the most, from the long-running success of Bosch to the much-watched Tom Clancy adaptations Jack Ryan and Without Remorse to the impressive numbers for the army v aliens thriller The Tomorrow War to, most recently, the record-breaking viewership of Lee Child’s Reacher (one could superficially nestle The Boys alongside for those who haven’t quite grasped the show’s pretty easy-to-grasp satire). It’s not all been bad per se but it’s mostly been indistinctive, a gung-ho formula of guys and guns that offers very little in the way of surprise. The Terminal List is an inevitable algorithmic amalgamation of the above with The Tomorrow War’s Chris Pratt heading up an adaptation of a Jack Carr novel, whose military adventures file next to both Clancy and Child, writers he’s expressed admiration for. But it’s familiar to a fault, a tired and tiring series unfurling on Independence Day weekend for those looking for a low-stakes post-barbecue watch, a slab of barely heated red meat that’s all extremely hard-to-chew gristle.
