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Critic Reviews
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De Oliveira might not be in their [Nicole Kidman and Morgan Freeman's] league yet, but if her performance here is anything to go by, she will be. Her Manuelos is a combination of barely suppressed rage and eagerness to please, and she’s very handy with a frying pan – as a weapon rather than an item of cookware. She also conveys an air of emotional vulnerability. You’re rooting for her within 90 seconds of her introduction.
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It’s too early to say where ‘Lioness’ will land, but it’s a promising beginning, arguably more absorbing than any of these recent shows, and hell, we’ll take that roar as long as it lasts.
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“Special Ops: Lioness” has all the makings of a crackling good military spy thriller.
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The first episode serves as a mostly successful setup, but much of what the show will become remains top secret. There's also a question of how this budget will be spread around; is the opening scene with all its helicopters and explosions a sign of what's to come, or just a big show to get viewers instantly hooked? I don't know, but the intel we do have on the rest of the series says it has some promise.
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Unlike “1923,” which moseyed at a glacial pace, director John Hillcoat keeps “Lioness” moving apace. It also helped that the first episode is a brisk 41 minutes, avoiding the bloat that mars too many streaming dramas these days.
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Despite occasionally stretching plausibility, Taylor Sheridan’s latest event TV series mixes explosive espionage action with domestic issues to mostly absorbing effect.
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There are hints here and there that it could become something better than the high-class hokum the pilot delivers.
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The show is good at what it does. The military sequences are well directed, the camaraderie of the team is well drawn, and each episode leaves you keen to see what happens next. It’s an effective action thriller, albeit one that only goes skin deep – there is none of Homeland’s complexity and the dialogue is cheesy in a Top Gun sort of way.
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With how the premiere is setting up the season across its eight episodes, there will be plenty of twists and turns along the way with potential room for a riveting thriller that keeps us at the edge of our seats. But as it stands now, more work needs to be done.
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For Lioness, Sheridan has assembled a handful of Strong Female Character tropes and sent them to war — resulting in a serviceable intelligence drama that escapes mediocrity thanks to its two leads.
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It's clear that Sheridan knows how to write engaging, addictive drama. With "Lioness," he's trying to do too many things at once for any one of them to be successful.
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What can be said about “Special Ops” from its first 42 minutes is that it looks like an awful lot of other counterterrorism thrillers, with a visceral punch to its action and a ticky-tacky, backlot feel whenever it moves in close on its Middle Eastern settings. Saldana registers stoic magnetism, as usual, as the overseer of the operation.
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Special Ops: Lioness isn’t a mess, but it’s strangely inessential and inert, given its cast and Sheridan’s involvement. There are better, similar shows out there.
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This one shrugs off any misgivings about its characters’ mission with the reasoning that “if you ain’t cheating, you ain’t trying.” Which sounds good coming out of a soldier’s mouth, as long as you don’t think too hard about how that line of thinking might play out in practice. But that seems to be par for the course for a series enamored more of impossible ideals than actual human nature or lived experience.
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There are points where it feels reminiscent of Homeland – but without the intrigue of that show’s initial premise (“Is Damian Lewis a terrorist?”). It’s a double-life drama that – frankly – needs to get a life.
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There’s a place for what amounts to meat-and-potatoes TV, even in the prestige-conscious streaming world. Nevertheless, when it comes to training an audience to come back week after week, “Special Ops: Lioness” feels about as basic as it gets.
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Here’s hoping the show gets more complicated after its opening hour (and finally shows us Morgan Freeman, one of the biggest names attached to the show but who remains absent from the premiere). Otherwise, it’s hard to see what this does for people outside the dopamine hits craved by folks who play a little too much “Modern Warfare.”
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A military thriller minus any thrills, originality, or nuance, it seems destined to follow the path of [Sheridan’s] prior Paramount+ hits: a show that features lots of talented people wasting their time on second-rate material targeted directly at red-state viewers.
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It is perhaps predictable that the Sheridan take on pop feminism would weaponize women’s liberation in service of the military industrial complex. After all, that rhetorical sleight of hand is as much a cliché as the rest of “Lioness,” which shows the strain of a single writer cranking out scripts for each of his half-dozen shows on air. “Lioness” may be a first for its creator in some respects, but in others, it’s more of the same.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 9 out of 23
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Mixed: 3 out of 23
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Negative: 11 out of 23
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Aug 6, 2023This review contains spoilers, click full review link to view.
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Jul 30, 2023They should've focused on the story and not the gimmick. I don't know who they thought would watch this, but I don't think anyone will.
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Sep 6, 2023Enjoyable show. It may not be realistic but was entertaining. Hopefully, there will be a second season.