Forget Jack Ryan, Prime Video's 4-Part Series Is The New King Of Action Thriller Shows

Published Sep 19, 2026, 10:00 PM EDT

Faith Roswell is a Senior Writer on Screen Rant's Classic TV team. Since earning her degree in Creative Writing over a decade ago, Faith has written articles on film and TV from a variety of different angles. Faith now combines her knowledge of psychology with her love of monster movies to give more insight into what makes the best ones. 

You may have read her Screen Rant lists and features covering horror, sci-fi, and fantasy, or read her Amazon Top 10 book, "Movie Monsters of the Deep."

Faith has had an extensive career as a writer, appearing on BBC live radio, researching true crime for Rotten Mango podcast, and writing for publications including Mental Floss, Atlas Obscura, and The Daily Jaws before beginning here at Screen Rant. 

Of all the great action TV shows on Prime Video, Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan stood out as one of the best from its first season, but it has rapidly been overtaken by another explosive series that has outperformed it. Jack Ryan was an instant recipe for success, adapting Tom Clancy's bestselling books and featuring a stacked cast led by an unlikely but inspired choice of lead actor. Before being cast as Jack Ryan, John Krasinski's best movies and TV shows included his career-defining role as Jim in The Office and other comedies, as well as some more experimental projects.

Still, Krasinski's casting proved to be one of the best decisions for the show, holding his own among the many other actors who have played Jack Ryan by emphasizing his intellectual strength as well as his fighting prowess. With the show's action, far-reaching plots, and great acting, Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan became Prime Video's flagship action series until another show took its place, turning all of the elements that made Jack Ryan such a success up to the maximum. The result was Reacher, fronted by Alan Ritchson in another of Prime Video's star-making turns.

Reacher Has Overtaken Jack Ryan As Prime Video's Flagship Action Show

Image via MovieStillsDB

Within just one season that earned the show 92% and 91% positive Rotten Tomatoes ratings from critics and audiences, respectively, Reacher proved to be an instant crowd-pleaser, becoming the most streamed television series for the week of February 7 - 13, 2022. This was the first Prime Video TV series to do so, and while Jack Ryan was impressive, it did not achieve Reacher's meteoric rise to success. With well-paced action, hilarious quips, and a lead character who is formidable in several ways at once, Reacher showed Jack Ryan how it's done.

Comparing Reacher to Jack Ryan
Title	Year	Seasons	Rotten Tomatoes critics' rating	Rotten Tomatoes audience rating
Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan	2018	4	80%	74%
Reacher	2022	4	95%	77%

This unprecedented success is largely due to the show's format. Jack Ryan focused on potential global catastrophes that its main character, CIA agent Jack Ryan, was charged with investigating, but Reacher is more self-contained. With each season of Reacher bringing its main character to a new place where he finds himself in some kind of trouble, the show is easier to follow while also giving other excellent actors the chance to stand out. Reacher's supporting cast features talented veteran character actors and new faces, raising the bar for action and outdoing virtually every other TV series in the genre.

Reacher Always Had More Potential As A Long-Running TV Show

While Reacher has already been renewed for a fifth season, Jack Ryan's creators had always planned to end the series after four seasons, with a spinoff and sequel movie planned. Unfortunately, this marked the end of an era for Jack Ryan, as the spinoff TV show was canceled and the movie, also starring Krasinski, was panned by both critics and audiences, who gave it 40% and 35% positive Rotten Tomatoes ratings, respectively. This change in formula was not, in hindsight, the best decision. On the other hand, Reacher always had more potential to become a longer-running TV show.

Lee Child has written 30 Jack Reacher books and, due to his impressive writing speed, it is likely that he will continue to outpace the TV show's creators, meaning that there is less chance of Reacher moving ahead of its source material. Both Jack Ryan and Reacher mostly worked as standalone stories, but Jack Ryan has kept his roots, with more regular characters and a longer narrative arc for Ryan as his career progresses. It is possible to start at any point in Jack Ryan, but it is easier to do with Reacher.

With Reacher's plot essentially resetting at the beginning of each season, it is less likely the show will lose viewers as long as the tone remains consistent. Fans of Ritchson are likely to remain watching the show for him, and with executives confirming that the role is his for as long as he wants it, that could be a long time. Jack Ryan is a good TV show in its own right, but Ritchson's charisma and the longevity of the source material meant that Reacher was always going to beat it for the role of Prime Video's action thriller king.

Reacher