When Prime Video spun Frances Neagley (Maria Sten) off into her own series, the question was whether Jack Reacher’s sharpest ally could carry a show without him.
Reportedly drawing around 40 million viewers in its first 13 days, according to The Wrap, and quickly renewed for season 2, Neagley has answered that question emphatically. Warning: spoilers for season 1 ahead.
Lessons learned from Reacher
Neagley is appealing for people who aren’t massive fans of action, as it is hugely character-driven, with noticeable character development. Each Reacher season leans into this pattern too, but not as well. Season 1 relied on Alan Ritchson’s Reacher (always a delight), Finlay (Malcolm Goodwin), and Roscoe (Willa Fitzgerald) to carry it. Finlay was amazing and needs to be brought back wherever possible, but Roscoe was so weak, she was almost enough to put you off watching another season.
Roscoe was the opposite of a strong female lead, unable to compare to Reacher in any way. It was fine that she wasn’t a “met his match” figure for Reacher. Not every woman in the show has to be that. But it was not awkward how she continuously had to be rescued and supported by him. Season 2 improved on the formula, introducing the 110th, and season 3 one-upped it again. Reacher works well on his own, and a smaller team is a good formula for memorable episodes without overcomplicating things emotionally or narratively.
Neagley launched with all these lessons learned from its parent show. It is mostly about Neagley and Detective Hudson Riley (Greyston Holt), and that is more than enough to focus on. By halfway through the season, we care about these two because they’ve had sufficient screen time, interplay, and good dialogue. Renee (Adeline Rudolph) and Keno (Jasper Jones) are the perfect embellishment at first. But as season 1 grows, they blossom from supporting characters into two of its main ones.
Reacher never got the character development memo. Its hero hasn’t developed past the age of 25, and that’s probably the point. But growing with characters is the formula of all the world's best TV series.
A mystery, not just a crime
Neagley’s opening gets the show off to a good start, where Reacher took far longer to warm up. A naked man walking hypnotically into the path of an oncoming train sets up not just a crime story but a mystery. It is Agatha Christie’s tales that offer mysteries like this. Most crime thrillers don’t bother to present viewers with a real riddle; they just present a crime. In this sense, by the end of its opening scene, the show had already outgrown Reacher.
Neagley uses trauma and mind-altering substances as a sandpit for its mystery to slowly unfold. It unwinds a story of vulnerable working-class people being used as lab rats in a cult setting to test Tranqlara, the next big pharmaceutical treatment for depression and trauma.
A romance built on touch
Neagley’s slow-burn romance with Hudson is original, inhibited by her phobia of being touched. It’s quite hard to care about the women thrown at Reacher, but it’s hard not to care about the eventual hookup of a show’s two leads when even the smallest touch between them would be a huge deal. It also enables highly detailed, sensitive acting from the pair, which is gripping. The stars shine.
Neagley breaking down in front of her father may be the best moment of the whole franchise. That emotion ripples out into the rest of the show. Now, it’s verifiably clear what lies behind Neagley’s stony facade: what we all suspected, but Reacher was never brave enough to confirm about its own lead, which is loneliness and vulnerability.
It’s smart how Neagley ends up a test subject for the treatment herself, which was teased from the start by the suggestion that her haphephobia is linked to trauma. This is why the show works so well. Its main character’s inner journey runs in parallel with the plot. As she explores her own trauma, so do the lab rats, and as she finally has a breakthrough in her own healing, the team has a breakthrough in the case.
Neagley is an intimate show, and the portraits of its main characters are deeper and more psychological than anything seen in Reacher. That’s enough to keep mystery fans, drama watchers, and action-thriller aficionados entertained. In many ways it is predictable, like Reacher, and most of its violence lacks credibility in the extreme, but that’s what most of the audience comes for. It was wise not to fix what wasn’t broken in this spinoff. It was also wise to fix what was, if not broken, just not quite perfect.
Season 1 of Neagley is streaming now on Prime Video.
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