“Reacher’s back,” said the poster for the second season of Reacher on Prime Video, the slogan writ large across Alan Ritchson’s colossal, rippling torso, photographed from behind. It was a brilliant bit of marketing because, with one silhouette and two words, it captured why this action crime thriller is so addictive: yes, it’s about a massive bloke who obliterates everyone he gets into a fight with, but it has a sneaky, self-deprecating sense of humour that makes it unique.
There is nobody quite like Jack Reacher, the hero of Lee Child’s bestselling novels, who has been so completely embodied - and what a body it is - by Ritchson. But there are plenty of other TV shows that have flashes of the Reacher magic.
Season one of Reacher is all about small southern American towns rotted by violent crime, while the second run visits the grubby gamblers’ paradise of Atlantic City - both are locations where Raylan Givens, the cocky marshal in Justified, would thrive. Like Reacher, you trust Givens to emerge from encounters with the baddest of bad guys with all his teeth intact and his smile wider than ever. Reacher also drifts from town to town, reluctantly running into trouble wherever he goes, like The Mandalorian without Baby Yoda and the spaceship.
And, like Mando, our man Jack is unbeatable in hand-to-hand combat. The first episode of Reacher announced itself as a juicy fight show with an unforgettable beat-down in a prison shower, the sort of bone-snapping scrap we haven’t seen on TV since the glory days of Banshee - another show where a lawman, albeit a bogus one, takes on local criminals, one by one.
In Reacher, though, the smalltime criminals always lead to a big conspiracy, and there is no shortage of great shows where tough Americans bring down a nefarious plot all on their lonesome. The Old Man is a strong one, with Jeff Bridges as the former secret agent who is still lethal in his old age. Another underrated spy thriller is The Night Agent, where Gabriel Basso is one good man fighting his way out of a series of impossible predicaments, caused by bad actors at the top of the political food chain. In Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan, John Krasinski is a senior CIA man, but it doesn’t stop him needing to use bullets and fists to bring the villains down. The first two of those, at least, share Reacher’s powder-dry wit.
For more hard-boiled US crime, you should try Bosch: Legacy, an excellent detective drama set on the streets of Los Angeles. But a lot of Reacher’s power and poise comes from him being an ex-military man: to find that vibe again, watch Shooter (Ryan Phillippe as an ex-sniper framed as an assassin) or The Terminal List (Chris Pratt as a Navy Seal avenging the murder of his family).
It may be that only Alan Ritchson will do. If so, the closest you’ll get to Reacher is probably the superhero saga Titans, where he’s a vigilante in Lycra. Ritchson has bulked up a lot since then, though - Reacher’s muscles would never fit in the costume.
