Look, I can't pretend this is a surprise. When I looked ahead at Prime Video's release schedule for February, I could have bet my life savings on which show would storm straight to the top of Amazon's chart on release. Lo and behold, Reacher has hit pole position immediately.
The show's third season has now started, but because it'll get weekly episodes you can only watch a couple right now. Still, that's been enough to rocket it up into the top spot, with bucketloads of fans tuning in for what promises to be a rollicking third outing for Alan Ritchson's massive loner hero.
This time out, Reacher's going undercover – as ludicrous as that might sound for a man of his outrageous stature. The trick to infiltrating a criminal enterprise as a near-giant bloke, it turns out, is making sure that said criminal enterprise already has an even bigger bloke on the staff, to make you look normal.
That role is filled by the menacing Paulie, who's one of Reacher's fiercest and most memorable adversaries from the source books. I've read each and every one of those, but Paulie stands out for a few reasons, the biggest of which is that he has more than a foot of height on the normally titanic Reacher.
So, even after just a couple of episodes so far, viewers know that they're basically certain to get one heck of a climactic fight between Reacher and a guy who looks like his evil bigger brother. They might have to wait a few weeks for it to finally come, but the show should continue to ride high in the charts until that point, regardless.
If you haven't tried the show out before, meanwhile, this is a great time to do so. You'll be able to blitz through the first couple of seasons while the third is coming out, meaning you've got a decent chance of catching up in time to get some suspense waiting for its finale. It's definitely a feather in Amazon's cap as it tries to be the best streaming service possible.
