Misfits and mavericks are so hot right now!
From Slow Horses to Dept. Q, and even Prime Video’s upcoming Bosch spin-off Ballard, there’s something about a team of undervalued underdogs sticking it to the system that audiences just can’t seem to get enough of this summer.
Such a show is Prime Video’s splashy crime drama Countdown, heading your way from Wednesday June 25. As if you didn’t know!
This gutsy team of sidelined misfits may be under-resourced, but Countdown certainly isn’t. Prime Video has thrown the kitchen sink at this one and the result is a slick roller coaster ride of action and drama that rarely pauses for breath.
Reminiscent of 80’s and 90’s action flicks like Beverly Hill Cop, Rush Hour, Lethal Weapon and more, the vibe is light-hearted character-driven drama with some big action set pieces, but tempered with the usual high stakes and darker elements you might expect from a summer blockbuster.
Helmed by the One Chicago franchise creator Darek Haas, Countdown stars Jensen Ackles (who also returns to Prime Video’s The Boys this season) as Mark Meachum, an LAPD Detective who is unceremoniously pulled from a 9 month undercover prison op and assigned instead to a secret Federal task force following the daylight murder of an officer with the Department of Homeland Security.
Headstrong lone wolf Meachum is none too happy about his reassignment, but soon discovers he and his new team are cut from the same cloth: independent thinkers, agitators, non-team players. The kind of people their former colleagues clearly couldn’t wait to see the back of.
Leading this team of underdogs is the firm but fair FBI agent Nathan Blythe (Eric Dane), alongside Intelligence deputy mission manager Damon Drew (Jonathan Togo). Agent Keyonte Bell (Elliott Knight) is an expert in terrorism threats. Evan Shepherd (Violett Beane) meanwhile is the resident nerd/hacker — but don’t call her that — while LAPD officer Luke Finau (Uli Latukefu) is all about guns, gangs and narcotics.
Perhaps the person who most matches Meachum’s energy though is tough as nails DEA Special Agent Amber Oliveras (Jessica Camacho), who the show sets up with a spectacular introduction, only matched by Meachum’s own. (While Meachum is first seen fending off a gang of cutthroats in a Los Angeles prison, elsewhere, Oliveras, tortured, and left hanging from a beam by her cuffed wrists is working her way to freedom, and treating her captors to some rough justice with a baseball bat.
The audience is not the only one who notices Oliveras’ passion, ingenuity and strength. Mecahum does too, and immediately attempts a team up. However Oliveras is having none of it. Apparently she knows Melinda, Meachum’s ex-fiancée. And Melinda’s sister Rachel. And why Melinda is his ex-fiancée…
Moving swiftly along.
Undercover experts, a resident nerd, a pair of kick-ass leads, and experts in specific fields? The team setup feels comfortably familiar from the get go. All that’s missing to complete the picture is the angry shouty boss who reprimands our heroes for going too far, or for destroying public property.
In fact, Countdown neatly subverts that particular 90’s movie trope with Blythe serving as a calm and softly-spoken anchor in the midst of the show’s chaos. In fact, if Blythe can avoid talking at all, he will. One scene sees our quietly spoken team leader inviting second in command Drew out specifically to “not talk” if he should ever want to get anything off his chest. Hats off to Eric Dane for bringing something extra and very likeable to what could otherwise have been a one-note character here. Instead Blythe feels authoritative and trustworthy with just a hint of danger lurking behind his steely and unflustered gaze.
But scratch the surface on any one of our collective little band of misfits and we soon begin to learn that every one of these people has been specifically chosen for this job. Everyone has a guilty secret, a history open to interpretation, a scandal, an illness, or a grief stricken-past that has — or will — threaten their livelihoods in due course.
Not only that, but it seems someone in the FBI doesn’t want Blythe to succeed in this investigation. Who can be trusted? And has this particular team been put together because they are disposable? If the worst should happen would anyone even investigate the “mosquitoes biting at their necks” as Meachum describes the team? Or is it because, in Blythe’s words because “the best investigators are the ones who keep their teeth in the bone no matter who or what tries to shake em off.”
We prefer to think it’s the latter.
The gang, as Blythe notes, is an “all star team” but one key question remains. Why assemble such a task force over the shooting of one lone officer (even if he’s played in a truly memorable and thrilling opening 5 minute cameo by an instantly recognizable TV actor we are forbidden from naming here)?
Perhaps it’s to do with the massive bribe he apparently took right before his death? But did he really? The hunt for answers and a killer takes the task force all over Los Angeles in the show’s opening episodes (we’ve seen 10 for the purposes of this review). What they uncover is a plot far more sinister than they could have imagined, and a race against time to save the entire city.
Countdown’s central premise is not entirely new. In fact, we’ve seen many plot lines just like it on Broadcast TV in shows like Haas’ Chicago P.D., and FBI: International and a host of CBS procedurals that feature a team racing to prevent another looming catastrophe. However Countdown, with its larger budget, varied locations (from LA to Mexico to Belarus to name a few), banging soundtrack, dramatic stunts and action set-pieces, and breakneck pace all serve to elevate standard procedural fare to far more exciting heights. There’s a tremendous sense of excitement and drive here, and each episode is consistently both bold and fresh, throwing our heroes into one high speed chase, covert under-cover op, or race against time, after another.
Jensen Ackles is leading man material, and Countdown gives him generous space and air to get on with it and do his thing. Whether he’s playing a role within a role as an undercover operative, hanging by his fingernails from a moving vehicle, or lapsing into comedy or pathos as the moment calls for it, he’s never less than consistently engaging.
Co-lead Jessica Camacho rises to match that energy and drive as Amber Oliveras, and their scenes together — as they constantly try to outman and outgun each other, or wrestle the lead of an investigation from each other’s hands — are fun, sexy, breezy, and witty without ever feeling like the writers have decided to push two characters together for the sake of the story.
Countdown is not without its flaws, but pointing them out almost feels like criticizing the coolest person at a party.
While the show hangs on a premise involving the safety of an entire city, the motivations of the show’s Big Bad don’t seem to warrant such drastic choices, despite a series of substantial flashbacks that depict his villain origin story. In other areas the show struggles to keep its tone consistent as it swings — pretty wildly at times — from humor and hijinks to serious dramatic drama, and back again. Likewise, the dialogue, which may be fine for an hour of Wednesday night Broadcast drama, occasionally feels a little cringe, leaning into melodrama and needless exposition at times.
In one scene a grieving widow, whose husband was just dramatically murdered, rounds on Blythe about her now fatherless son: “I wanna know why someone would destroy a nine year old boy’s heart. Rip it right out of him. You tell me that!” she sobs, instead of something a little less on the nose like “I wanna know who killed my husband!”
In another scene Meachum checks in on Oliveras by inquiring ”I’m just checking to see how you are after that bomb went off in our face last night?”
You might almost expect to hear Oliveras respond in kind: “You mean the bomb that almost killed us both? The one from last night? When we were tracking down that lead together? In that mission that went sideways unexpectedly? That one?”
However these flaws are relatively minor sins, scattered as they are at intervals amid the show’s bigger moments of action and drama, and ultimately serve as minor irritations and amusements, depending how you choose to view them.
While Derek Haas is known for crafting dependable broadcast procedurals, Countdown manages to break free from the constraints of traditional network television, and on the whole, delivers a cinematic experience that pulses with a vitality not often found in a typical Wednesday night slot. Proving that more is more, the show leverages brisk pacing, a substantial budget, and an expansive scope to pay thrilling homage to some action flicks of the day, elevating it into a spectacle that feels larger than life, and distinctly premium.
Pacy, physical, brash, and rocket-fuelled, Countdown might just be the bombastic soundtrack your summer TV slate needs.
Countdown premieres on Prime Video with 3 episodes on Wednesday, June 25 followed by one new episode each week until its finale on Sept. 3, 2025.
Follow us @TVPulseMag on Twitter/X and on TVPulseMag.com on Bluesky for more Countdown scoop and weekly recaps.
