The first trailer for John Krasinski’s new Amazon show, Jack Ryan, did not get me excited the series. As much as I like Krasinski, I don’t think we need an “American abroad fighting terrorists” show right now. It looks like 24 except without the catchy gimmick. Well there’s a new trailer tagged to the Super Bowl that shows us more of Krasinski running around with a gun, making Serious Jim Face, and stuff blowing up in dusty brown lands, populated by dusty brown people, pretty much the only view Americans get on the rest of the world these days (Wakanda come and save us). There seems to be some kind of refugee situation? And Jack Ryan is maybe helping with that? An American operative helping refugees is certainly a political statement these days, probably one the show did not intend to make, but here we are. It looks very well produced but also generic as hell and again, do we even need this right now?

Oddly, the release date is August. That’s a long way off, and before you ask, yes, the show is done filming. Done completely, in fact. From the release of the first trailer to the premiere on Amazon, it will be almost a year. Why the delay? Well, Amazon has been in free-fall since their studio chief, Roy Price, was ousted during the Hollywood Predator Advent Calendar’s countdown (still ongoing). (And just before that mess broke came a story that they don’t get along with talent all that well.) In the wake of the Harvey Weinstein accusations, they cancelled a still-developing series from The Weinstein Company and David O. Russell, which was less about Harvey and more about the tens of millions they’d spent with no result (they continued with Matthew Weiner’s Romanoffs limited series, but dropped TWC from the credits). So things at Amazon are in flux. They don’t have a clear direction and the search for a new studio boss is ongoing. The delay on Jack Ryan could be down to the chaos at Amazon Studios HQ. But other shows are debuting in the meantime, so I am terribly curious about why it’s taking them a year to get this one out.