Prime Launches First of 2018 Military Dramas

Prime’s SEAL Team is the first of the US military dramas you can expect to see in primetime this year.

It will screen 8.30 Fridays from February 9, ahead of TVNZ 1’s The Brave and Three’s Valor.

“SEAL Team makes a strong effort to bring the human element of the fight against amorphous terrorists to the broadcast audience,” Variety said.

And to the show’s credit, the emphasis of the show is less on its gung-ho action sequences than it is on the close-knit team of people conducting those complicated missions. There’s an attention to detail about military life and forays into faraway lands that lends an atmosphere of the appreciably romantic. And by the end of the pilot, the ensemble feels rock-solid.

It stars Bones’ David Boreanaz as the leader of a clandestine unit. “The tactical precision and comms-chatter banter suggests nothing so much as a direct adaptation of the Call of Duty multiplayer,” quipped Entertainment Weekly.

USA Today saluted it as “the most sincere” of the three new military dramas.

“The series works mostly because it’s not reaching beyond its comfort zone. Following a team of Navy SEALs carrying out covert operations with the aid of the CIA, it’s an uncomplicated action series without twists or unnecessary spectacle, at least so far.”

The Hollywood Reporter called it “a tribute to two things: Boreanaz’s ability to carry an otherwise bland and forgettable military procedural and CBS’ awareness of its brand and its audience’s appetite for a certain kind of bland and forgettable military procedural.”