Move over Reacher: the overlooked action thriller everyone’s missing
Reacher, starring Alan Ritchson, has bulldozed Prime Video, but it isn’t the only bone-crunching binge in town—there’s another sleek, hard-hitting thriller fans should queue up next.
I keep banging on about Neagley, the Reacher spin-off, but if I had it my way, there’d be a whole series just about Jack Reacher’s years before he started wandering the States and flattening baddies. He spent time as an Army MP—there’s a goldmine of stories there, from his days at West Point to dark operations like Kite Runner, and the lingering shadow of Dominique Kohl’s death. If you’re into that military-flavoured drama like I am, the good news is there’s plenty of telly to scratch the itch. And nestled amongst the options is one I think’s been criminally overlooked: Echo 3.
Echo 3: The 'Band of Brothers-in-Law' You Missed
Now, Echo 3 is based on an Israeli series called When Heroes Fly, if you’re deep into foreign drama imports. Mark Boal—yes, that Mark Boal who wrote The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty—created this version. It landed on Apple TV back in November 2022, clocking in at ten episodes. The main names on the cast list? Luke Evans (Welsh, hard to miss), Michiel Huisman (the Dutch go-to bloke for anything international), and Jessica Ann Collins. If you want no-frills, hard-hitting action with some soapy chaos thrown in, this one’s as honest as they come. It’s the kind of series lurking just out of everyone’s eyeline, and frankly, it deserves to be dug up.
Here’s The Rundown:
- The action opens somewhere in the Middle East, with Prince (Huisman) and Bambi (Evans) in the thick of it, showing they’re very much not to be trifled with
- Amber Chesborough (Collins) enters the scene. She’s an expert scientist, off in Colombia, researching why local shamans don’t get hooked on homebred hallucinogens. Personal note: she’s Bambi’s sister and Prince’s wife. Weird dynamic, but there you have it
- Predictably, it all goes to bits: local guerrillas nab Amber and her team on the Colombia-Venezuela border. They dig through her kit and find a military tracking device (courtesy of Prince)
- The guerrillas accuse her of being a spy. Which… isn’t strictly untrue, since the CIA gave her a secret brief before she left the States
- From here, it’s punchy, twist-heavy, and doesn’t mess about with the violence or the pace. You’ll probably hate the villains, but to be honest, Amber makes some crackingly odd decisions too. I had serious Skyler White (Breaking Bad) flashbacks, and not in a charitable way
- On the writing side, the dialogue post-action veers somewhere between believable grunt banter and low-key warmth. It’s a rare balance
'Let the games begin!'
One not-so-small detail: Echo 3 really leans into anti-establishment energy and doesn’t shy away from putting its main characters through the wringer. If you’re tired of cardboard villains and unearned redemption arcs, this is a welcome shift.