Boxing Clever: Reacher
Every week, Michael Telfer – aka Mike TV – recommends a box set to crack open. This week’s pick is a literal literary giant.
Jack Reacher is a retired Military Police officer, formerly of the US Army. He is the lead character in a fantastically successful series of books written by British author Lee Child, which have sold over 100 million copies worldwide.
There are 30 Reacher novels in all, and I’ve currently read 29 and a half of them.
Some are brilliant, some are ok, some are fairly bad and one was so wretched that I couldn’t bring myself to finish it, despite being a faithful and largely forgiving fan of the series.
Two film adaptations were released in 2012 and 2014, controversially starring Tom Cruise in the lead role. I say controversially because Tom Cruise is small enough to avoid paying VAT on his clothes and Jack Reacher is massive.
Unfortunately for Tom, Reacher’s massiveness is quite a fundamental part of the character.
Lee Child said at the time that “Reacher’s size in the books is a metaphor for an unstoppable force, which Cruise portrays in his own way.” Almost nobody was convinced.
As a result the films were largely disliked or boycotted altogether by the fans of the books, and after two attempts Paramount cut their losses.
So when Amazon announced they were making a TV adaptation of the books in 2019 there was a sense of nervous excitement. Who would they cast as the lead role? Could they pull it off?
The answer to the first question quickly turned out to be Alan Ritchson, a jobbing TV and film actor known for appearing in shows such as Titans and Blood Drive (no, me either) and for being irrefutably massive.
And thanks in no small part to Ritchson’s casting, the answer to the second question was a resounding and brutal yes.
Ritchson is a beast. He embodies Reacher perfectly from the first frame of the first episode, where we find our oversized antihero cramped into a diner booth ordering pie. Within seconds he’s surrounded by armed local police, but his pulse never goes above 58.
You could be forgiven for briefly wondering whether Ritchson is slightly too clean cut or handsome to play the grizzled character from the novel, but any concerns on this front evaporate the second the punches start flying, which doesn’t take very long.
The Reacher books are deliciously violent, with the damage wrought by Reacher’s breeze block fists described in vivid detail. The TV show embraces this theme and Ritchson is entirely convincing as somebody who relishes brawling and is more than capable of cracking skulls.
The first season followed the first and possibly best Reacher novel, Killing Floor. The plot twists and turns as Reacher reluctantly finds himself drawn into a large and sophisticated criminal enterprise, which he ultimately has no choice but to confront head on. There was only ever going to be one winner…
The series was an instant hit for Amazon Prime, and two further seasons followed in quick succession, based on the novels, Bad Luck and Trouble and Persuader, which is a firm favourite amongst fans of the books.
Ritchson has had a bit of a unwanted attention this month after a well publicised run in with a neighbour, so he would no doubt have been glad to make headlines for better reasons when he announced post production has finished on Season 4.
If you start watching them now you should be just about up to date by the time it drops like a bunker buster bomb.