Reluctant spy Jack Ryan once again helping to save the world
pies to the left of me, spies to the right of me, spies everywhere. This is the life of reluctant CIA agent Jack Ryan. I have just embarked on season three of this great series and, although
isn’t in the James Bond category in my opinion, it is a gripping series that makes you keep coming back for more.
is a political action thriller created by author Tom Clancy.
It depicts CIA analyst Jack Ryan who is played by John Krasinski and was created by Carlton Cuse and Graham Roland.
Cuse and Krasinski serve as executive producers alongside Michael Bay and Mace Neufeld, among others.
The first season follows
CIA analyst Ryan as he is wrenched from the security of his desk job into the field after discovering a string of dubious bank transfers, which are being carried out by a rising Islamic extremist named Suleiman.
In this first season the character of Ryan is formed and this informs future series.
The second season sees
Jack in the middle of political warfare in a corrupt Venezuela.
In the third season, Jack investigates a plot to re-create the former Soviet Union by detonating an untraceable tactical nuclear bomb in a country of former Eastern Bloc.
In the episode opener it is 1969 and a secret project to develop a nuclear weapon, Sokol, is deactivated. Under the orders of Luka Gocharov, a Soviet officer, all of the project scientists are killed.
It then cuts to the present, where Jack Ryan learns that Sokol has been reactivated, and he is informed that a threemegaton nuclear weapon may have already been developed.
The panic button is therefore pressed.
Jack is sent the location of a cargo ship, and organizes a team to retrieve what he suspects is
Sthe weapon.
After leading a team to the ship, he discovers that the payload is a Sokol project scientist, Yuri, who is trying to defect from Russia.
After rescuing Yuri the team drops Jack and Yuri off at a rally point on a beach in Greece, but they are quickly ambushed.
Much of the extraction team is killed, and Jack and Yuri flee to Athens. Unfortunately Yuri is killed and Jack is isolated.
Jack is subsequently told that the investigation into Sokol is being terminated and that he is to return to Rome, as he is wanted for accidentally killing a Greek police officer.
Ryan takes matters into his own hands and decides to flee and destroys his phone so he can’t be traced.
Jack is now effectively on the run and this is where the real intrigue and action begins.
This season of the Jack Ryan saga, along with the first two seasons, all of which can be seen on Amazon Prime, make for great unfussy TV.
They are series that aren’t concerned with world-building tropes, but instead concentrate on featuring manly men doing manly things while at the same time duffing up the bad guys and, as an aside, saving the world from annihilation.
As per usual you get the impression that Krasinski isn’t quite right for the part of Ryan, but he does a passable job.
In this season – the penultimate one featuring eight instalments – a full story is told with a beginning, a middle, and an end.
Throughout the series one gets the impression that Ryan, as played by Krasinski, is perhaps a little bit too old to convince as being out of his depth in the field, while not being grizzled enough to dispatch the bad guys with badass action heroism.
And, although Ryan has to rely on his keen wits to get him through some tricky situations he is not on his own. There is always the reliable and welcome duo Wendell Pierce and
Michael Kelly as James Greer and Mike November to assist him remotely as CIA operatives bending the rules to assist.
If you have managed to catch any of the first two seasons but you didn’t get any fulfilment out of them, then this season I fear will not change your mind on the Jack Ryan franchise. However, as with most of these series, as they develop we become more familiar with the cahracters and in this there is an added layer of polish, so it it could be that you are in for eight or so hours of tightly-plotted, blockbuster-sized television that gives you exactly what you want.
There’s plenty of panache and convoluted plot and it’s an easy way to spend one or two bingeing sessions when all you require for the night is undemanding entertainment. Catch it on Amazon Prime.