Prime Video’s blockbuster series The Terminal List hasn’t seized the zeitgeist or captured the imagination in the way you’d expect from an eight-episode epic packed full of action and espionage that stars A-lister Chris Pratt in the lead role, and there’s a couple of notable reasons as to why.
The first is the Stranger Things effect, with the adaptation of Jack Carr’s novel landing on the same day as the second volume of the Netflix behemoth’s fourth and penultimate season, so there was only going to be one episodic streaming exclusive dominating the discourse that weekend.
Another is the less than enthusiastic reviews, with The Terminal List sitting on a disappointing 43 percent Rotten Tomatoes score, although the user rating is over twice as high at 95 percent. When asked for his thoughts on the polarizing reception to the show, Carr stated his belief to The Hollywood Reporter that negative reviews had come from “triggered” critics.
“It falls right in line with everything that I understand about the current culture and climate in America right now. It seems to have triggered quite a few of these critics. The 95 percent viewer rating, audience rating, makes it all worth it. We didn’t make it for the critics. We made it for those in the arena.
We made it for the soldier, sailor, airman and Marine that went downrange to Iraq and Afghanistan, so they could sit on the couch and say, ‘Hey, these guys put in the work. They put in the effort to make something special and make a show that speaks to them.’ And that 95 percent rating lets me know that we at least got close.”
Critics and audiences are very rarely in agreement, but the proof of The Terminal List‘s success will come when we discover whether of not Amazon will renew it for a second season, with all of the key creatives already keen to bring the remainder of the James Reece books to the small screen.
