‘The Terminal List is… a dated and drably made eight-part military thriller that offers little intrigue or excitement,’ says the Guardian’s ‘east coast arts editor’ in a corrosive one-star review. Eh? Can we have been watching the same series? Let me give you an example of this ‘little intrigue or excitement’ and allow you to judge for yourself.
Navy Seal Lt Commander James Reece (Chris Pratt) is having an MRI scan to determine whether he has suffered brain damage during a disastrous combat mission in Syria in which almost his entire platoon was wiped out. All his colleagues, superiors and family think he’s going mad because his memories of the mission do not remotely accord with the official version of events. We, the viewer, are not quite sure: is this a Jacob’s Ladder-style hallucination drama in which none of the protagonist’s visions are to be trusted; or a thriller in which the hero is being ‘gaslit’ into disbelieving what he once knew to be true? Perhaps the scan will give us a clue.
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