Even with a sidekick, Reacher is a big draw
Reacher Prime Video, streaming
BBC Sports Personality Of The Year BBC1, Tuesday
Vigil BBC 1, Sunday-Tuesday
There was outrage over a decade ago when it was announced Tom Cruise would play Jack Reacher in the film adaptation of Lee Child’s first book in what has become a very long series. The problem was a simple one. Reacher is described as being 6’ 5”, while Cruise is almost a foot shorter at 5’ 7”. After one sequel, Child decided his readers were right, and instead took the property to Amazon Prime Video, where the star of the series is Alan Ritchson – not quite Reacher’s exact height, but a more credible stand-in at 6’ 2”.
Not only that, but Ritchson is absolutely pumped, built like the veritable brick you-know-what. Perhaps it is because of all that muscle that he has a very peculiar gait, walking down the street as if trying to get home after a digestive accident.
The first Reacher series was based on the book, Killing Floor, and set in small-town America, and it benefited greatly from the underlying presence of community secrets and corruption – think Boss
Hogg and the Dukes Of Hazzard without the cars.
The first four episodes of the second series, based on Bad Luck And Trouble, dropped this week on Prime, and it is much more ambitious. Before he became a drifter, Reacher was head of a special investigations unit in the US army, and his team became the usual clichéd band of brothers and sisters. Now, years later, someone is killing them one by one.
Reacher’s sidekick and friend, Frances Neagley, manages to contact him by making a coded deposit in his bank account – because he doesn’t carry a phone –and they set out, aided by two other former comrades, to hunt down the culprit and find out why they have all been targeted.
Of course, hired hitmen completely underestimate Reacher’s brute strength, and they are despatched in such a way that their bodies will never be found.
By the end of the third episode, which is as far as I’ve got, the group learn that one of their colleagues works for a nefarious corporation that seems to be up to its neck in the plot to kill them.
To be honest, I preferred the narrow canvas of the first series, which relied more on Reacher working alone. With sidekicks in tow, he oddly seems less of a presence, dramatically if not physically.
That said, Maria Sten impresses as Neagley, as do Shaun Sipos and Serinda
Swan as the remaining members of the group, with the latter now also a love interest for loner Reacher. Domenick Lombardozzi is impressive as a New York cop who hasn’t quite figured out who he is dealing with. Meanwhile, a shadowy arms dealer, to date known only as AM because they’re the initials of all his many aliases (he is played by Ferdinand Kingsley, son of Ben and his ex-wife, theatre director Alison Sutcliffe) is on the run after being rumbled.
I’m not a binge watcher by nature, but I larruped through the first three episodes and, by the time you read this, I’ll have watched the fourth yesterday on a flight to England for Christmas. That is the best indicator I can give you of how much I’m enjoying Reacher, and I’ll hop on episode five as soon as it becomes available this coming Friday. If you’re off this week with time on your hands, you won’t do much better.
There was a lot of emotion in the BBC Sports Personality Of The Year on Tuesday, first in the form of Jamaica-born Des Smith, who won the Unsung Hero award given to people working at the grass roots. A product of the Windrush Generation of Caribbean immigrants to the UK, Des has been the driving force behind the Sheffield Caribbean Sports Club since 1986. Originally set up because immigrants from the West Indies were not allowed to join many sports clubs in the area, it since has become a focal point not only for that community but for those of all backgrounds. His speech went on a bit, but there was something noble about Des’s demeanour, and it showed how one man can make a real difference. Another example of this was when Fatima Whitbread won the Helen Rollason Award for her advocacy for children in foster care. A product of that system herself, during which she endured physical and sexual abuse, Fatima told how her life changed when she was fostered by javelin coach Margaret Whitbread, and went on to win gold in the World Athletics Championships, and bronze and silver at successive Olympic Games.
But the tear ducts really came under pressure when Kenny Dalglish, a hero on the pitch and a legend off it for his response to the Hillsborough tragedy when he was with Liverpool, won the Lifetime Achievement award.
His wife Marina told of the toll that tragedy took on his mental health, and to see him all these years later on stage with former colleagues on one side and his family – ‘my greatest team’ – on the other, was deeply moving. I’m a Leeds United fan, but I know an admirable man when I see one, and Kenny Dalglish is that man.
Finally – and there’s a spoiler coming – call me clairvoyant, but on this very page last Sunday, I predicted that Air Marshall Marcus Grainger (Dougray Scott) was a wrong ’un in BBC1’s terrorist thriller Vigil. So it proved, but I hadn’t twigged that Squadron Leader Eliza Russell (Romola Garai) was in on the plot too.
Seeing both get their comeuppance was the highlight of the week, and hopefully there’s a third series on the way next year. We must keep Vigil at all costs.