Review #3756: Hunted 1.1: “Mort”

Contributor: Bronzethumb

Written by Frank Spotnitz
Directed by S J Clarkson

The new British and American co-production is just that: new. It’s got some behind-the-scenes pedigree, but the first episode of “Hunted” was always going to have to leap the hurdles of a premiere episode, introducing its premise and its characters and making the audience care about both. Yet it seems like all the effort went into a very slick, cinematic presentation that’s lovely to watch in its own right. The styling should complement a strong script and a good cast, but instead it overshadows a lot of spy clichés, a lot of weak, shallow emotions and a cast that’s hard to get a handle on.

“Hunted” follows professional spy Sam Hunter, who works for a private intelligence agency called Byzantium. Following a mission, Sam is the target of an assassination attempt and spends months recuperating in secret while the world presumes her dead. Sam suspects the assassination was organised by one of her colleagues, so she eventually returns to work at Byzantium’s London office on a mission to find the perpetrator. In the meantime, her first job back involves infiltrating the family of a rich criminal patriarch.

It’s not that any of this is particularly bad or silly, but it’s all so familiar and so riddled with the overused tropes of spy films and TV shows that viewers will wind up thinking “okay, so?” The way to overcome that hurdle of unoriginality is to present the story with characters we know and like, but this is the show’s premiere. We don’t know the characters, and the series hasn’t earned the benefit of the doubt required for us to say that yes, the plot is unoriginal but we’re willing to go with it for the moment.

The presentation is nothing to sneeze at. Comparisons to “Strike Back” will be obvious, between the co-production angle and the high production values, but really, “Hunted” is leaping into the void left by the late, lamented “Spooks”. It’s trying to meld the familiar pulpy tropes of James Bond and his ilk with the more grounded, bureaucratic and hard-hitting stylings of John le Carre or Frederick Forsyth; the difference is that “Hunted” is going in a slightly different direction content-wise, presenting its anti-heroes as private sector spies rather than beleaguered public servants. The location work is gorgeous and the cinematography adds a dark literary quality.

The problem is that the script doesn’t quite live up to this great presentation. It never bungles the story but it fails to draw us in with twists or intriguing characters. Sam is such a cypher that it’s hard to develop a real emotional connection to her — think Olivia Dunham, circa season one of “Fringe”. And Melissa George handles the action, the intrigue and the tragedy rather well, but before we can really appreciate the character or the performance, Sam needs to thaw out a little. Not completely, but just enough so we can latch on and invest in her story.

The rest of the cast are blandly solid, or solidly bland. Everyone’s so restrained that it gets hard to tell who’s a flat actor and who’s doing a great job of playing someone just as introverted and restrained as Sam. It doesn’t help that we get so little personality and only the most basic of dynamics, but “Hunted” will need to step up its game in future episodes with regards to the characters. We need to watch people we like, or people we hate: right now, the show is populated by people who are simply there.

Allowances have to be made for the fact this is a pilot. It’s covering a lot of ground, giving exposition and trying to step up characters and stories for future episodes to capitalise on. The problem is that it gives us so little in the present. Right now, it’s for those who enjoy procedural espionage, and it skates through on an excellent presentation. There’s a real opportunity for “Hunted” to fill the void left by most action-espionage dramas going off the air in recent years, but it need to work on its drama. Viewers need to care what happens to Sam, and right now, they don’t.

Score: 6/10