The twists and turns of Prime Target defy explanation yet are delightful to unspool. .... I wasn’t sure if Prime Target had enough of a premise to sustain so many hours of viewing, yet I gleefully clicked through all eight screeners.

It is derivative, preposterous, utterly unbelievable and great fun. It’s got confidence and style and is here to deliver escapism to the power of pi cubed, or something, and it does. Prime ridiculous entertainment.

Even though it telegraphs its “surprises” way too often, it’s always entertaining — even as it gets tied up into plot knots by its end. As a bonus, Martha Plimpton co-stars and Stephen Rea appears in a smaller role. They get to chew a bit of the scenery, and it’s a welcome addition to this passable thriller that’s elevated by its lead star.

Prime Target is playing with known formulas and well-worn tropes, turning to real-life anxieties about privacy and surveillance for narrative fodder. But in wrapping them all around maths—and a character who’d rather not be part of this story at all—the series keeps running into dead ends that are never as interesting nor as exciting as this would-be spy thriller presents them as.

I slogged on, beguiled by the strong cast (David Morrissey, Sidse Babett Knudsen, Quintessa Swindell, Fra Fee, Stephen Rea), some of whom, as is typical of prestige streamer thrillers, seem to have about three scenes each. Then a sinister maths institute was slung into the mix and the glossy tedium got too much.

Serves up basically competent if unmemorable action and raises worthwhile if not exactly novel debates. But it does not show the math, serving two-dimensional pawns instead of three-dimensional characters and lofty-sounding speeches instead of nuanced dialogue — and, as a result, fails to add up to much at all.

[Edward] is neither written well enough nor played particularly strongly to warrant any interest beyond the central relationships he finds himself at the center of. Woodall delivers each bloated line with a woodenness fitting of his name, making “Prime Target” more grating with each episode.