Special Ops: Lioness takes Taylor Sheridan into the world of spies

Taylor Sheridan’s television empire conjures up the image of a man on the broad plains of the West, sipping a (domestic) beer and grunting.you kill with a mixture of admiration and sadness before turning his gaze back to a weather-beaten copy of one of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s famous novels. Taylor Sheridan knows America better than you do: its power and its majesty, its joys and sorrows, who it celebrates and, above all, who it doesn’t celebrate.

In the new Paramount Plus series Special Unit: LionessSheridan turns his thoughtful gaze to the women in the armed forces. Supposedly based on a real CIA task force, lioness follows a team that brings female agents into the lives of women near assassination targets. It’s a nasty subject, the moral of which the series briefly acknowledges while loosely acknowledging its necessity and diving headfirst into the series’ core: a character-driven spy thriller.

lioness revolves around two women: Joe (Zoe Saldaña), who leads the Lioness team, and new recruit Cruz (Laysla De Oliveira), an ambitious woman who can only join the Marines when her abusive boyfriend finally goes too far. The first episode — the only one of the two-part premiere that was previewed to critics — is largely about anchoring the characters in audiences’ minds during moments of crisis.

Viewers meet Joe during a failed operation when a lioness agent is deployed by enemy soldiers and Joe decides to attack the entire scene with a drone in order to save the lioness from torture and humiliation while also maintaining the secrecy of her program and not endangering any of her support staff in a rescue that likely would have been unsuccessful. It shows immediately what kind of person Joe is; While most of the protagonists in shows like this are willing to push boundaries to get their jobs done, Joe pushes boundaries to protect her team. Even when others can’t see it, that’s what she does.

Meanwhile, fueled by a lifetime of abuse and denied opportunities, Cruz impresses her Marine recruiters with her tenacity and physical prowess and is almost immediately recommended for the Lioness program. This is not a matter of course: Joe’s team works in secret and is not geared towards it ooh Brotherhood of Marines, and Cruz balks at how Joe keeps her at arm’s length. However, your concerns remain limited to the technology for now.

Granted, the first episode of lioness ends when the actual espionage begins, and as Cruz meddles with her victim, it’s possible the series could prove more thoughtful than it did in its premiere. As the series progresses, the ugly spy work could expose Cruz to women who were abused and taken advantage of for who she was — who she was Is

in the Lioness program – and become a better story for it. As easy as it is to paint Sheridan’s work with a broad brush, his TV empire is more complex than Cabela’s July Fourth sale, as it seems from afar as he occasionally turns and contemplates the storm clouds on the fringes of the American Dream.

At present, Special Unit: Lioness is only 24-lite, a fast-paced, action-packed drama with a generous dash of movie stars (Nicole Kidman appears as Joe’s government aide, and Morgan Freeman makes a later appearance). Overcoming the shortcomings of this type of story—the jingoism that Piss filter for foreign countries, and so on — but strong performances and a tight eight-episode run could lead to something worthwhile. At least it’s nice to see a Sheridan show that isn’t about a damn ranch.

Special Unit: Lioness Premiered on Paramount Plus on July 23.