Lioness

The Zoe Saldaña-led spy thriller’s sophomore run is fantastic, and stands as one of the year’s best TV shows.

“Lioness” keeps those goading incitements mostly at the edges while getting back to what it does better: pressure, surveillance, violence, bad information, worse decisions, and forceful people trying to outmaneuver each other with sharp language, colorful opinions, and very little patience.

Season 2 is certainly a step in the right direction for this series and leads us to hope Sheridan will pursue more thriller projects in the future.

Despite occasionally stretching plausibility, Taylor Sheridan’s latest event TV series mixes explosive espionage action with domestic issues to mostly absorbing effect.

With how the premiere is setting up the season across its eight episodes, there will be plenty of twists and turns along the way with potential room for a riveting thriller that keeps us at the edge of our seats. But as it stands now, more work needs to be done.

There are points where it feels reminiscent of Homeland – but without the intrigue of that show’s initial premise (“Is Damian Lewis a terrorist?”). It’s a double-life drama that – frankly – needs to get a life.

It is perhaps predictable that the Sheridan take on pop feminism would weaponize women’s liberation in service of the military industrial complex. After all, that rhetorical sleight of hand is as much a cliché as the rest of “Lioness,” which shows the strain of a single writer cranking out scripts for each of his half-dozen shows on air. “Lioness” may be a first for its creator in some respects, but in others, it’s more of the same.

Loved it. Saldana, Kidman & Michael Kelly are fantastic. Edge of seat thriller. Can’t wait for season 2.

Even though Zoe Saldana and Nicole Kidman are the stars, they play bosses of the woman doing the work (Laysla De Oliveira). She's a new recruit to the special secret ops group and her mission is to befriend the daughter of a wealthy funder for terrorists. Her training and subsequent involvement forms the crux of the story with the other 2 women confronting the political and logistical consequences. Creator Taylor Sheridan has placed the emphasis on female characters with their personal relationships adding an emotional connection, but the thrust is really about the covert ops. There are a few moments of tough physical encounters to maintain the action adjective, but the focus is on the mental challenges these characters face, so there's lots of Sheridan's spicy chatter punctuated by spurts of violence.

Season 1 was stunning, season 2 turned out to be a rehash with the same romance arc and everything. Also that battle in the final episode was awful, like Iron Eagle 2 awful. Whoever designed and choreographed that should never be allowed near military hardware on film again.

Who with military experience approved this script? Saldana deserves better writing. Brutal.

What started out promising drifted midway through and then ended very poorly. Zoe was superb. I thought her character was well written and acted. The other star power really pulled their weight too. But ultimately the show devolved into weak story telling, over acted characters, and unbelievable plot points. I knew halfway through it wouldn’t end well. Way too much drama devoted to side characters and backstory that was needless. I actually fast forwarded through most of that to just watch the operational parts. It’s truly sad because this show could have been so much better and really launched a new series. But with how this one played out I wouldn’t bother watching another.