Streaming services were supposed to offer a unique alternative to network TV, but the older they grow, the more they resemble that which they sought to replace.
Just as Netflix produces sitcoms and HBO Max struck recent gold with The Pitt, Prime Video now gets into the old-school television business with Countdown, a dadcore series premiering June 25 that’s the spitting image of its creator Derek Haas’ prior NBC and CBS hits Chicago Fire, Chicago P.D., Chicago Med, Chicago Justice, and FBI International.
Clunky, simplistic, unbelievable, and inert, it’s a show that manages the impressive feat of being generic in absolutely every respect.
Whereas even the most drawn-out streaming series usually start strong before stretching themselves thin in an effort to fill out a full-season order, Countdown spins its wheels from the moment go.
Following the murder of a Department of Homeland Security customs and border patrol agent (Milo Ventimiglia, never to be seen again), Nathan Blythe (Eric Dane) assembles a special task force to figure out who’s behind the crime. This seems like absurd overkill for a single homicide, even of a government employee. Yet for reasons that are never persuasively explained, Blythe’s hunch that this is related to a larger conspiracy nabs him unlimited local and federal resources to get to the bottom of it, complete with a best-of-the-best team that’s made up of men and women who appear to have been found via a casting call for an NCIS spin-off.
The unofficial leader of this squad is Mark Meachum (Jensen Ackles), a gung-ho LAPD detective who’s brash, courageous, and dying of a terminal brain tumor that gives him bad headaches and which he hides from his comrades. That Meachum is still running-and-gunning with weeks left to live is laughable. Still, it at least means he has more than a sole character trait, which is more than can be said about his partners.
Amber Oliveras (Jessica Camacho) is a DEA agent whose undercover assignment got her hooked on drugs, Luke Finau (Uli Latukefu) is an LAPD narcotics officer who’s big and strong, Keyonte Bell (Elliot Knight) is an FBI terrorism expert who’s following in his dad’s footsteps, and Evan Shepherd (Violett Beane) is an FBI cyber sleuth whose job is to sit at computers in the embarrassingly bland office from which Blythe runs this Los Angeles operation.
Secret bank deposits and possible cartel connections are early leads for Blythe and his crew, although their big break comes when they visit the port which Ventimiglia’s agent patrolled and get into a shootout with baddies who are trying to smuggle into the country Fissile material for, ostensibly, a bomb.
The mastermind of this scheme is Borys Volchek (Bogdan Yasinski), a Belarusian national with a long history of illicit dealings, a big grudge against the United States, and a habit of executing anyone who betrays him. The task force, however, doesn’t really get a beat on Volchek for hours upon hours, as Countdown’s episodes involve its heroes investigating a variety of avenues, and suspects, that have almost nothing to do with the main conspiracy and/or fail to move the plot forward.
From chasing down crooked bank managers to brawling with doomsday psychos, the show has its protagonists exert maximum energy on largely inconsequential diversions and dead ends.
Alas, that’s merely one of Countdown’s problems. Ackles’ gruff, cocky routine aside, there isn’t a vibrant personality to be found in this leaden affair, lowlighted by Dane’s extraordinarily one-note performance as a boss who, whether he’s praising or criticizing someone, boasts one blankly stern expression. Haas’ writing does no one any favors, full of functional dialogue and insipid twists and turns, most of them having to do with random nobodies whose connection to the bigger picture is miniscule at best.
Dramatically stolid and ungainly, the saga plods along with zero momentum or creativity, having its do-gooders engage in one conversation after another—and accomplish daring action feats—that could be cut without any appreciable effect to the main narrative.
Countdown marries creaky scripts with graceless direction, such that there isn’t a single attempt at crafting an interesting image. The show has all the dynamism of a CBS procedural, and yet at least those weekly series have the good sense to tell a self-contained tale in an hour. Haas’ latest, on the other hand, distends its hackneyed counter-terrorism plot to torturous lengths, flip-flopping between focusing on its task-force ciphers and Volchek, a stick-figure baddie whose origins are as unremarkable as his current machinations.
To track down this villain, Blythe’s team infiltrates foreign consulate buildings to steal encrypted computer data, stage fake prison breaks, and engage in chases (on foot and in cars) that have all the get-up-and-go of an afternoon nap. None of it is important, to the point that viewers could skip any given episode and still be in the loop.
There’s also a running subplot about Blythe’s friction with District Attorney Grayson Valwell (Merrick McCartha)—who for no good reason doesn’t like the task force—and regular flashbacks to Volchek’s prior escapades in Belarus, each of which is duller than the last.
Countdown is flavorless through and through, not to mention crude; nuance is so absent from the proceedings that it feels downright soap opera-ish. Worse, it doesn’t create real stakes, hiding the true nature of Volchek’s plan (and motivations) for more than half of its 13-episode run—a strategy that underlines Haas’ belief that specifics are less important than clichéd scenarios, characters, and conflicts.
Despite its title, Countdown is devoid of ticking-clock urgency, as well as energy, no matter Haas’ fondness for recognizable rock tracks by Metallica, Wolfmother, and more. It just goes through the formulaic motions, vacillating between scenes concerning its empty-vessel main players’ relationships and issues, and investigative passages that always lead nowhere, slowly.
So lackluster is the show that even lumping it in with Prime Video’s other dad-centric hits (Reacher,Jack Ryan, The Terminal List, Bosch, Cross) seems unfair, since even the most patient fathers will find its pacing interminable, its heroes hollow, and its race-against-time story about as suspenseful as toasting a bagel.
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