TV Series/Blu-ray Review: 'Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan: Season One'

On August 31, 2018, Amazon's Prime Video began streaming Season One of Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan, an eight-episode action-adventure/political thriller web television series based on the eponymous character created by the late Tom Clancy. Starring John Krasinki (The Office, A Quiet Place) as Ryan, Wendell Pierce as James Greer, Abbie Cornish as Dr. Cathy Mueller, Ali Suliman as Mousa Bin Suleiman, and Dina Shibabi as Hanin Ali, Jack Ryan is not an adaptation of any of Clancy's novels but is a reimagining of the best-selling author's multimedia "Ryanverse" that borrows elements of the literary character's DNA to create a story set in the troubled times we live in.

Created by Carlton Cuse (The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. and Lost) and Graham Roland (Fringe, Prison Break, and Lost), Jack Ryan focuses on the efforts of Central Intelligence Agency analyst John Patrick Ryan to find a shadowy Muslim terrorist and prevent him from carrying out a terrorist attack in the United States.

As in the Jack Ryan novels, the eight-part series also features subplots involving its supporting characters, including 1st Lt. Victor Polizzi (John Magaro), a MQ-9A Reaper Sensor Operator based in Nevada, Ali Suleiman (Haaz Sleiman), a young ISIS operative on the run, and Dr. Daniel Nadler (Matt McCoy), the leader of a group of physicians working with Doctors Without Borders who are being held in Syria as hostages by ISIS. Their stories intersect with Ryan's hunt for the clever and ruthless Mousa Suleiman in order to prevent another 9/11-like attack on the American homeland.

Produced by Amazon Studios, Skydance Television, Paramount Television, Platinum Dunes, and Push, Boot, the series' first season was filmed in the U.S., Morocco, and France and features a solid international cast that includes Timothy Hutton, Blair Brown, Marie-Josée Croze, Amir El-Masry, Ron Canada, Cynthia Preston, and Goran Costić.

The eight episodes of Season One are:

• Pilot
• French Connection
• Black 22
• The Wolf
• End of Honor
• Sources and Methods
• The Boy
• Inshallah

Though Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan uses some of the conventions from old-school TV dramas and movies, such as time jumps within episodes and telling the story from various perspectives, the series is reminiscent of Fox's 2001-2010 series 24; all eight episodes focus on one all-encompassing story arc rather than being episodic in nature. As such, it's very much like a classic TV miniseries a la Rich Man, Poor Man or North and South, the only difference being that while those minis from the late 1970s and early '80s were based on popular novels, Jack Ryan is an original story loosely based on the character created by Tom Clancy in the 1984 best-selling novel The Hunt for Red October.  

My Take

When CIA analyst Jack Ryan stumbles upon a suspicious series of bank transfers his search for answers pulls him from the safety of his desk job and catapults him into a deadly game of cat and mouse throughout Europe and the Middle East, with a rising terrorist figurehead preparing for a massive attack against the US and her allies. - Amazon Prime Video synopsis

Though Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan uses some of the conventions from old-school TV dramas and movies, such as time jumps within episodes and telling the story from various perspectives, the series is reminiscent of Fox's 2001-2010 series 24; all eight episodes focus on one all-encompassing story arc rather than being episodic in nature. As such, it's very much like a classic TV miniseries a la Rich Man, Poor Man or North and South, the only difference being that while those minis from the late 1970s and early '80s were based on popular novels, Jack Ryan is an original story loosely based on the character created by Tom Clancy in the 1984 best-selling novel The Hunt for Red October.

I've seen television evolve from the analog-only black-and-white medium of my childhood and the Big Three networks-dominated broadcast to the early 21st Century's plethora of cable channels and web television services. I've also witnessed the migration of scripted comedies and dramas to pay-to-view services such as Hulu, Netflix, Amazon's Prime Video, and the upcoming Disney+, while ABC, NBC, CBS, and the CW focus more on inexpensive (and to me, boring) reality shows that are really scripted shows with casts of non-actors hired to create cheap and often silly drama. 

To be honest, I was skeptical about web television series as a concept, and I have yet to get into the habit of streaming shows, either on my computer or on an Internet-compatible "smart television." I mean, I use the Internet all day long to work on this blog, socialize (I don't know many people in my new home town), or even shop online. Must I also use the Net to watch TV, too? 

But I'm also a loyal fan of the late Tom Clancy and his best-known character, Jack Ryan. So when I saw that my Prime membership allows me to stream many shows and even movies for free, I decided to watch Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan over a three-day period last summer. 

Even taking into account that the show exists in a separate sector of the Ryanverse, it's ironic that the character created almost 40 years ago as the antithesis to James Bond has now been portrayed by five different actors (Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford, Ben Affleck, Chris Pine, and John Krasinki), only one less than the six men who have played British MI-6 Agent 007 over a 50 year period. 

Yet, Carlton Cruse and Graham Roland have done a good job at rebooting Jack Ryan a third time (The Sum of All Fears and Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruits films also count as reboots, since they both purport to show the origin story of John Patrick Ryan as a new CIA analyst), this time played by the actor whose best-known TV role is Jim Halpert from The Office. 

The series works rather well because even though it is independent from Clancy's novels, it keeps some of the original literary character's back story elements. In The Hunt for Red October, Clancy established that Ryan was briefly a second lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps and that his career was cut short by a helicopter crash. Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan sticks to Ryan's pre-CIA history, updating it slightly to fit its "Present Day" setting. 

Other elements from Clancy's novels are used in the series as well, such as Jack's brief career in the financial services industry as a stock trader, his parting-of-the-ways with his former boss Joe Muller,  and his romantic relationship with Joe's daughter Cathy, who is a medical doctor in all of her incarnations. (In the books and at least the Harrison Ford movies, Cathy is an ophthalmic surgeon; in Jack Ryan, Abbie Cornish's Cathy is an epidemiologist.)

Ryan's mentor from the first four novels in the Clancy oeuvre, James Greer, is also rebooted after his onscreen portrayals by James Earl Jones in Paramount Pictures' The Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games, and Clear and Present Danger.  Unlike Jack Ryan, his character has been completely retooled from his original literary incarnation. 

Whereas Clancy's (and the films') Greer was a U.S. Navy rear admiral who served as Deputy Director, Intelligence (DDI) at the Central Intelligence Agency, the Jim Greer (Wendell Pierce) is a former Chief of Station recalled to Langley after Pakistan declares him persona non grata as a result of a mission that went sour. In the web series, Pierce's Greer is younger, more acerbic, and initially clashes with Jack when he becomes Ryan's boss at CIA's Terror, Finance, and Arms Division (T-FAD) in the series' Pilot episode. 

The series also keeps viewers' interest by adding a supporting cast of characters that includes believable and relatable friends, foes, and incidental characters who feel real and multi-dimensional. Showrunner Cuse, who co-wrote half of the series' eight episodes with writer (and War on Terror Marine veteran) Graham Roland, avoids the use of simplistic "good guys vs. bad guys" storytelling and spends onscreen time showing the human side of Ryan's antagonists without letting viewers forget that they are terrorists intent on harming the U.S. and the West.

I've read some of the customer reviews on Amazon, most of which were written by viewers who are unfamiliar with Clancy's novels or the world in general. Some, like "Paul," gave Jack Ryan one-star reviews because at least three episodes feature some nudity or sexual content. 

Well, while Jack Ryan is, in the books, a stalwart and by-the-book Company man, he was a married man, and Clancy sometimes alluded to his sex life with his wife. And even the conservative (and Catholic) Irish-American writer was not above including "bedroom scenes" in his novels; one of his last books, Threat Vector, had three sex scenes that were relevant to the plot. 

Other criticisms from Amazon customers claim that the series' writers should not have made one of the CIA characters Muslim, or that too many of the other people on the show speak only in Arabic. 

I find both of these complaints to be silly and based on bigotry. First, it doesn't make a difference if one of the "good guys" is Muslim; there are many U.S. citizens who are adherents of Islam, and quite a few of them serve in government or in the military. Even 24 had a couple of CTU agents who were Muslim and were still loyal to the agency and the U.S. Second, much of Jack Ryan's Season One is set in Syria and other parts of the Middle East. Arabic is the common language of the region. Besides, the show has subtitles in English. 

Granted, I was surprised to see nudity in the TV incarnation of the Ryanverse, since the Paramount Pictures films produced by Mace Neufeld (who is one of the series' executive producers, along with Krasinki and Michael Bay). Nevertheless, it was part of the overall story and adds to the drama of Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan.

The series has so far been a success for Prime Video. Amazon was so pleased with the quality of the show that it renewed Jack Ryan for a second season even before Season One premiered in August of 2018. And in February, Amazon announced that the show will be renewed for a third season even though Season Two has not streamed yet.

The Blu-ray

On June 4, Paramount Home Entertainment released Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan: Season One as a two-disc Blu-ray set. (A DVD edition was also released.) It presents the eight-part series and a few selected deleted scenes on two Blu-ray discs in high definition widescreen format. 

Although the home edition lacks the Prime Video version's "X-ray" feature that gives viewers behind the scenes trivia about the cast, the locations, and elements of the Ryanverse that are used in the show, it does have a unique Dolby Athmos sound mix, plus subtitles in various languages, including English for the deaf and hearing-impaired. 

With a running time of 400 minutes (less than eight hours), viewers can binge-watch Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan in one big marathon or watch it over a few days, if they prefer. I've enjoyed the show immensely even though the writers do take creative liberties with the Clancy canon, and I'm curious to see how Jack and Cathy's budding romance, as well as Jack's CIA career, develop.