Say what you like about Hannibal Lecter, but he had joie de vivre. Unlike Jack Reacher

Jack Reacher has returned to Prime Video for a second series (new episodes every Friday). Reacher, created by Munster-based river baby Lee Child, is an ex-military policeman and he is entirely made of muscle. If you haven’t seen Jack Reacher, imagine someone has built a wall of prime beef and put it in a tight T-shirt. Now imagine a wizard has put a spell on that beef wall so that it is advancing towards you violently. Reacher might also be said to resemble a bus with a face drawn on it or possibly a kitchen extension like Dermot Bannon might build. Well, I have a surprise for you. Reacher is played by a human man named Alan Ritchson. He is, I am pretty sure, the widest Alan in existence. However, I am willing to be corrected. (Please send me pictures of wide Alans you know.)

When I first heard Jack Reacher’s name I assumed his arch-nemesis would be called something like Jim High Shelf and that his sidekick would be named Timmy Stepladder. But Reacher, in a slight to nominative determinism, barely ever reaches for stuff. The lack of reaching often makes me angry – and, yes, I’ve talked about this before. Reacher doesn’t reach. Most typically he strides. How does he stride? Down the middle of the road for some reason, maybe because under US law Reacher is classified as a type of car. Where does he stride? From town to town across the United States in search of enlightenment, pie and people to assault. They should really have called this programme Hunk Hobo, not Reacher. Or Swole Kerouac Fights America, perhaps.

Actually, there is some reaching in the first episode of the second series. Reacher foils a carjacker who has kidnapped a whimpering child by reaching through a car window, pulling the man through the glass and repeatedly slamming his head in the car door in front of the child. Good enough for him, the poxy bollox, says you. Arguably, once Reacher has disarmed the man the repeated head-slamming is unnecessary. But I’m not going to argue with Reacher, because I don’t want to have my head slammed repeatedly in a car door. Reacher always knows what he’s doing, so he presumably commits this leisurely violent act in front of the child because that whiny little cry baby needs to grow up. Violently saving children is a recurring theme in the show. In the most recent episode Reacher’s pals mow down a gunman with an SUV inches from another moaning baby who needs to get over herself.

“Want to see your mother?” Reacher shouts gently at the traumatised child in episode one. He leaves before the police come. Reacher has no time for police, petty bureaucrats tied up with red tape and “rules” about not using car doors to slam heads in. Then he gets a secret message from an ATM telling him to meet up with people from his old army unit. Whenever I get a secret message from an ATM telling me to get in touch with my old army unit, I know it’s time to take a few days off and visit my GP, but Reacher goes to New York, where, lo and behold, he does have an old unit. They are being murdered one after the other, so Reacher and his surviving pals, two women and a smaller man (all men are smaller men than Reacher, in fairness), start to investigate.

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How Reacher investigates crimes is not how Sherlock Holmes investigates crimes. It’s a little more like how the alien in Alien investigates chest cavities. By episode six there are many people Reacher and company have investigated thoroughly: a whole biker gang, some hitmen who open fire on Reacher at a funeral, some more hitmen whom Reacher leaves submerged in wet concrete on a building site in Vegas.

At one point on being asked what he wants by a villain, Reacher says: “I want to throw you out of a helicopter.” This is a callback to what happened to one of his friends. It’s also as straightforward an expression of a character’s wants and needs as you’re going to get in contemporary fiction, and it should be taught on creative-writing courses.

Reacher is paced very strangely. When not engaged in senseful violence, Reacher and his friend group like to stand around in Dunnes’ winter fashion range reminiscing about the past. There are a lot of flashbacks in which they are having a “good time” laughing woodenly at regional insult comedy. Rather reliably, Wide Alan delivers all lines, whether jokes or threats, as though snapping angrily at a duck. And there’s often something grimly workmanlike about Reacher’s ultraviolence. Watching the light going out of another man’s eyes seems to bring him no joy whatsoever. Say what you like about Hannibal Lecter, but he had joie de vivre.

It is also implied that Reacher is very good at sex even though he has the body shape and flexibility of a reasonably priced caravan

Some detail on Reacher’s chums: the smaller man quips and has children whom Reacher looks upon with confusion. (All people probably look child-sized to him.) One of his female colleagues pays for everything, because Reacher is a hunk hobo with no interest in worldly things. The other woman is clearly attracted to muscly rhomboids, for she and Reacher embark upon sexy high jinks together. It is implied that Reacher is very good at sex even though he has the body shape and flexibility of a reasonably priced caravan. There is also a gruff manic pixie dream cop, with whom Reacher bonds by means of his “love language” (he assaults him) and who, in the most recent episode, ends up sacrificing himself nobly to save a child (whom Reacher’s chums traumatise with revenge violence).

What is the meaning of Reacher series two? After watching all six episodes so far, I think the meaning of Reacher is that the US is filled with people who need to have their heads slammed in car doors by a large man untrammelled by “laws”. I mean, there’s genuinely a whole interlude in which Reacher’s plans are almost stymied by the United States’ overly restrictive gun regulations. (What sad times are these when a violent hunk can’t whimsically purchase powerful armaments for vague reasons?) Nonetheless, there’s a strange purity to Reacher’s extrajudicial escapades. It’s probably only a matter of time before “I want to throw you out of a helicopter” becomes a policy position in the upcoming US election.

Noah Hawley’s excellent Fargo (Prime Video) has also returned for another season of messily executed crimes, inventive cinematography, eerie dream sequences, political satire, oddball characters and brilliant actors (Jon Hamm, Juno Temple, Lamorne Morris and Joe Keery, to name four). It’s beautifully made television. It’s a bit unfair to compare Fargo to Reacher, which is the United States’ id as expressed by a malfunctioning AI, but Hamm’s corrupt fascist sheriff also has “I want to throw you out of a helicopter” energy. Cue Election 2024 and cries of “When I voted for the ‘I want to throw you out of a helicopter’ guy, I didn’t expect he’d throw me out of a helicopter.”