6 February 2025
If like me you’re a fan of psychological political thrillers with a high quota of paranoia and suspense, then this new 8-part series promised to tick all the right boxes. Yet, four episodes in, none of it adds up and I am bailing out.
It started so well in an explosive prologue in ‘Baghdad, Iraq’ where a massive bomb blast in a bustling market opens up a hole in the ground leading to a spectacular medieval chamber with ancient writing or characters on the walls. Cut to Cambridge and Leo Woodall – so brilliant as Dexter Mayhew in the Netflix adaptation of David Nicholls’ One Day, White Lotus and soon to be Bridget Jones’s new love interest – as a young genius maths student on the verge of an earth-shattering numerical breakthrough.
As Ed gets closer to developing his prime finder, which could decode every single digital key on earth, some people don’t want to see Ed’s life’s work realised, others covet it for themselves, and even more people want him dead. In what should been Good Will Hunting meets The Bourne Identity, Woodfall looks constantly bored. Ed, a social recluse has neurodivergent tendencies, but he is fatally stripped of much-needed emotional connection and personal development.
And this series proves that numbers and equations scribbled in note books or on computer screens are not in the least bit interesting.
Buffed Fra Fee as Adam, the ultra fit barman he picks up and starts a faltering relationship with, is completely wasted, their scenes together chaste and tentative, bar the odd snatched kiss and Woodall baring his naked bum. It’s as if the producers added the gay twist for spice, but then ran scared of terrifying its audience by pulling their punches.
Prime Target is total hokum devoid of any tension or sense of mounting danger, a dense and — as it goes on — increasingly dull show. It never truly gains momentum, fizzling out before it even gets started. And in Ed, Woodall is saddled with playing one of the most unlikeable TV leads this side of Succession’s Kendall Roy.
