Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan - Season One

The first episode or two are slightly slow burners but they help to set the scene with a lot of worthwhile backstory, before we really get stuck into the action. From then onwards it’s a tour de force of intrigue, espionage, action and intelligence gathering reminiscent of 24 and the original Jack Ryan movies. Great casting and cinematography and difficult to fault so can highly recommend it.

Episode 3. We know they speak Arabic to why do we have to use subtitles. If I wanted reading practice I would take evening classes. Basically, it ruined what was becoming a good series. Much more reading my way through another episode and I will give the rest a miss. Clancy never wrote dialogue in Arabic in his books - we don’t need in the films.

Love it worth every penny

It was a good series but it was over priced for what it was. For me the price should have been around £7.99. It will make me think twice about purchasing again from Amazon.

Jack Ryan is a TV series reboot of a movie that was a reboot of several other movies that were originally a series of books.This series follows a young CIA analyst, the titular Jack Ryan as he follows a trail of money that uncovers a terrorist threat to his country.From begining to end this series doesn't shy away from some uncomfortable and horrific real life geo-political issues. Human traffickers, the refugee crisis, radicalisation, poverty and grief to name but a few.This series keeps a few themes and characters from the early Jack Ryan incarnations of movies and books, but that's it. So newcomers to the characters will be entertained - but old fans will be able to watch and still be surprised by plot points and character developments too.The good: This series explores Jack's struggle with PTSD from his early military career in the Marines.It shows Jack slowly making a name for himself in the CIA as an Analyst - even though he seems to spend a lot more time in the field than is good for him.The bad: Why are the terrorists ALWAYS Middle Eastern? Seriously? Sure, I'll hand it to the writers and producers - not ALL of the Middle Eastern characters are bad guys. But this sort of blinkered fixation is part of the problem that is fuelling xenophobia hate in todays troubling political mentality on a global scale.The exploration of Jack's PTSD wasn't very deep. It felt like there could have been a lot more to say and explore of this facet of Jack Ryan. Hopefully the next season will do so, rather than just ignore it.Overall it's actually a good show. But it remains to be seen if this show will avoid the mistake of a fixation on Arabs are bad in season 2. I remain hopeful.Note: For those uninitiated with the original books this show is based upon - there was a plot in one book that involved a similar threat vector as seen in the final episodes of this season. But in the book, the bad guys were actually super rich 1%'ers and it was set around the Sydney Olympics. Funny how they decided to go with Arab terrorists on the TV show.

The dvd is unable to watch - says it is 'wrong country' !This is very disappointing

This is a polished and slick first series. It’s very watchable and the lead actor, John Krasinski, is cast well in the role of Jack Ryan. I wasn’t sure about the character at first as I thought he was a tad weak but there are reasons for that and Ryan has his own demons he’s dealing with. He started to grow when his belief in what he discovered gave him the balls to keep pushing and take things a bit further and going beyond his brief made him stand out and I liked that about him.The location shots are excellent! and really added credence to the story. There must have been a sizeable budget for this but it would have failed miserably if another US series shot everything somewhere in N. American when pretending to be in the Middle East or France. You can usually tell these false locations but not in this series so well done for that.This is a not a series full of constant blood and guts (there are some, yes), excessive profanities, over-acting and mad action scenes - it’s a lot more real than all that movie stuff you often see.The characters are more than believable and their background stories are brought in carefully without you thinking it’s forced into a slot just to convey something. The overall plot is a well established one – stop the bad man – and though it’s well paced and kept me entertained and curious, it’s subtle too and it didn’t feel obvious which is always disappointing when you feel like you’ve written the script yourself and it unfolds exactly as you thought. This series surprised me with some of the things it covered and you’d have to have a hard heart not to be moved by the scenes of the refugees journey and what they had to do and go through to get to a boat.I read one review which compared this series to 24 but it’s nothing like that. "Goddamit!" For me, 24 ended up too focussed on Bauer’s character and he always had to be the reluctant/constant hero. Jack Ryan’s character doesn’t feel self-centred like that…he’s a lot more human and someone I’d definitely want to watch more of and see develop.Particular mention on the acting of Dina Shihabi and Haaz Sleiman (wife and brother of Suleiman) as I thought they were wonderful. Such under-stated acting at times for such strong characters.Let there be a series 2...and soon, please.

The books sell themselves. The story works. The trailers have promise. I've put it on my watch list. Let's wait and see.....