The Code (2019)

It is consistently diverting and sometimes educational. And its characters, and the actors who play them, even when you can make out the clockwork animating their actions, are easy to like, and even care about, as something approximating people.

The Code, which is both nicely produced and also thoroughly predictable, looks destined to likewise get a Season Two.

It also isn't nearly as lively and fun as you might hope for from a reteaming of Sweeny and director Marc Webb, who also collaborated on Limitless, an above-average take on the CBS procedural formula and the best-case scenario for CBS latching onto a movie. The Code is something resolutely more average.

Much of this feels like programming CBS has done elsewhere, and more effectively. The argument for The Code is its willingness to probe into aspects of military life and the traumas that go along with it--but given how jauntily, artificially upbeat so much of the series is, it’s unclear how serious the show even is about its central premise.

There’s not much to cracking “The Code,” which is a paint-by-numbers show if ever there was one.