On March 5, the final episode of the first season of the conspiracy thriller «Prime Target» starring Leo Woodall was released on Apple TV+. You may have seen this actor in the series «The White Lotus», «Citadel» or in a recent romcom «Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy». In the review below, we tell you how he coped with the role of a brilliant mathematician and what characteristics the show deserves in general.
Genre thriller
Showrunner Steve Thompson
Starring Leo Woodall, Quintessa Swindell, Stephen Rea, David Morrissey, Martha Plimpton, Sidse Babette Knudsen, Jason Flemyng, Harry Lloyd, Joseph Mindell, Daisy Waterson, Serhiy Onopko
Premiere Apple TV+
Year of release 2025
Website IMDb
Cambridge University graduate student Edward Brooks is a math genius. He doesn’t get along well with others, but he’s great with numbers. That is, he is one of those people who are ready to scratch mathematical formulas anywhere with a marker, even on the walls or on a tablecloth. One day, one of the professors at the university, Mr. Robert Mallinder, who believes in Edward’s talent, asks the boy what he is working on. But when he finds out that he is working on finding a pattern in combinations of prime numbers (whatever that means), he orders the young talent to stop working immediately.
Later, Brooks is horrified to discover that Mallinder has stolen and destroyed his records, just before he commits suicide. All of this is closely monitored by NSA agent Tyla Sanders, which is actually part of her direct responsibilities. Immersed in this case, she comes to the conclusion that Professor Mallinder’s sudden suicide is not really a suicide, but that Brooks himself is in danger. The girl decides to investigate the situation and help the mathematician find the answers to all the riddles, which will lead them both to shocking discoveries.
The authors of «Prime Target» were clearly trying to cross a (pseudo)scientific adventure in the spirit of «The Da Vinci Code» with a spy thriller. In a sense, it’s Will Hunting and Jason Bourne in one bottle, as Matt Damon’s filmography is aptly named.
Along with intellectual discussions about the fundamental role of prime numbers in human life, phrases like «Newton was a fool» and the discovery of an ancient library in a dungeon in Baghdad, there are purely Bourne-esque spy stories. The menu includes: absolutely absurd surveillance of math professors by the NSA, travel to France or Iraq, theft of valuable museum artifacts, persecution, suspicion, betrayal, and sometimes good old-fashioned violence.
It’s a pity that showrunner Steve Thompson, who has worked as a math teacher for 20 years, and his team managed to realize a rather interesting idea only half-heartedly. Somehow, they don’t manage to combine science and espionage, talk «about the high» with dangerous high-stakes games.
To put it simply, the really exciting and tense moments, which are vital for a thriller, coexist with the frankly boring and passable ones. For example, the main character’s romantic arc (homosexual, if anything) is useless in terms of its predictable, purely functional component, while some quests of the long-suffering mathematician and his unexpected partner really rivet you to the screen. It would have been much better if they had cut out all the unnecessary stuff that slows down the plot, and it would have been much better.
Given the themes raised by the series, it is impossible not to recall Nolan’s «Oppenheimer» — it is not without reason that the name of an American nuclear physicist is mentioned in one of the dialogues. Edward Brooks also runs the risk of becoming a kind of «father of the atomic bomb» by creating a weapon of mass destruction, albeit in the digital dimension.
The «key, which can open any» digital lock, is potentially just such a weapon. And no matter in whose hands it would end up, there are many people who want it — from government organizations and private companies to Serbian shaven-headed mercenaries or an old dean who dreams of «brave new world», — humanity will definitely be in trouble. However, in the beginning, the young prodigy does not think about such fundamental questions — science is still above all for a naive dreamer.
Unfortunately, unlike Christopher Nolan’s epic biopic with its truly outstanding acting performances, «Prime Target» is not so smooth.
Questions arise already at the stage of the main actor: Leo Woodall gives a sluggish, uncertain performance, and his sociopathic character becomes annoying almost immediately. You definitely won’t want to root for him. There is no chemistry between Edward and the NSA agent played by Quintessa Swindell.
Even if, given the homosexuality of the protagonist, some kind of romance is impossible here, but one still has to look for such an uninteresting on-screen couple. Here, while watching «Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning» the interaction between the characters of Tom Cruise and Hayley Atwell is fascinating to watch from the very first minute. There is nothing like that here.
There’s not much to say about the others, except that it’s worth noting the appearance of Kharkiv-born Serhiy Onopko, who you might have seen in a spy thriller not long ago «The Agency» or an adventure-biographical drama «Saint-Exupéry».
As a result, «Prime Target» is narratively uneven and doesn’t fall out of the sky. In places, the story does look good, but for the most part, the tossing and turning of «smart guy Will Hunting» local spill is about as fascinating as math class for a die-hard humanitarian.
