‘Prime Target’: Who Thought a Thriller About Math Was a Good Idea?

Prime Target can be summed up by the following equation: Math plus computer hacking equals the dullest conspiracy-minded thriller in recent memory. Steve Thompson’s eight-part Apple TV+ series, premiering Jan. 22, is the dreariest sort of small-screen affair, defined by a cyber-warfare story without drama or suspense, lead actors who lack charisma and chemistry, and a pace that gives new meaning to the word sluggish. Even those who are fascinated by algebraic theories and doomsday scenarios will find it a sludgy chore not worth completing.

Edward Brook (The White Lotus’ Leo Woodall) is a post-graduate math whiz at Cambridge who’s obsessed with prime numbers. Though he doesn’t particularly care for Professor Robert Mallinder (David Morrissey), he agrees with the instructor’s belief that “we are by nature explorers—compelled to walk beyond the horizon,” and that “there are answers to all nature’s mysteries” and mathematicians, as “visionaries,” are obliged to unearth them.

Edward is a purist who loves math for the sake of it, and because his true mentor is suffering from Alzheimer’s, he winds up being supervised by Robert. Nonetheless, he’s stubbornly reluctant to divulge the true focus of his research, which has to do with unlocking the invisible pattern that governs prime numbers—and, with it, the universe.

Robert is simultaneously intrigued and frightened by Edward’s obsession, and he only grows more concerned when Edward sees photographs of a subterranean chamber that’s recently been discovered in Baghdad—following an explosion that took out a bustling street’s ice cream parlor—and realizes that the hidden archaeological site may contain the key to “God’s cipher.”

For decades, Robert’s wife Andrea (Sidse Babett Knudsen) has been searching for this historic birthplace of algebra (dubbed “The House of Wisdom”), and she intends to travel to Iraq to inspect it herself. That plan is interrupted, however, by a tragedy: Following a dinner during which Edward scrawls groundbreaking equations on a tablecloth and his professor subsequently burns it and all other evidence of the student’s output, Robert kills himself, leaving behind merely a cryptic voicemail.

While Andrea is naturally upset by the loss of her beloved spouse, Edward exhibits little overt reaction, in large part because Woodall embodies him as a blank-faced antisocial nerd whose even-keeled demeanor resonates as a flatline. Edward couldn’t be less captivating, and neither is the revelation that he’s being surveilled by Taylah Sanders (Quintessa Swindell), an NSA agent situated out of Cassis, France, who’s part of an operation designed to keep tabs on the world’s leading mathematicians.

The reason American spies care about these individuals is that they fear the geniuses might devise an idea with radical and destructive potential, and Taylah quickly deduces that Robert didn’t take his own life. Moreover, she determines that his work was of little interest; it’s Edward’s research that’s really valuable. No sooner has she figured this out than she and her team are attacked by hired killers, motivating her to travel to London to locate and protect Edward.

Directed by Brady Hood, creator/writer Thompson’s show establishes all this with scant urgency and a preponderance of complications that prove to be simply window dressing for a mundane tale of mathematical invention, government duplicity, and corporate villainy.

Despite having zero personality and less game, Edward strikes up a relationship with bartender Adam (Fra Fee), and Andrea seeks occasional counsel from long-time colleague James (Stephen Rea) who’s oh-so-understanding about her grief and professional ambitions. In both cases, the series falls on its face trying to mask ulterior motives, and it does an even clumsier job drumming up momentum. Entire episodes drag their feet getting from one globetrotting locale to another, undone by not just lethargic scripting but a fundamentally dreary premise that never grabs one’s attention.

Edward is wooed by a suspicious private firm that wants to encourage his inquiries (and own them), and Taylah strives to wrestle control of her chaotic situation by relying on her boss and godmother Jane (Martha Plimpton).

These are both foolhardy courses of action because everyone in Prime Target is a shady scoundrel with murderous intentions, and eventually, it becomes clear that they’re all after Edward because his nascent theory could upend the geopolitical status quo by providing transparency where there’s confidentiality. The quest to conceal and reveal secrets is at the heart of this saga, yet the material’s clandestine truths turn out to be uniformly mundane, including Taylah’s culpability in the death of her boyfriend—a crime that was covered up by Jane (who then hired her at the NSA) and for which Taylah feels immense guilt.

Sloppy storytelling abounds in Prime Target, such that cataclysms are averted through overly convenient developments, and everyone is under constant surveillance except for those moments when it’s not narratively expedient, at which point they can easily get around buildings, offices, and city streets without being detected. Edward learns that he’s not the first person to stumble upon this magical theory; decades earlier, another Cambridge student related to Robert also cracked the code and, for her troubles, died in an apparent suicide.

Forgiveness, responsibility, and atonement are all part of this muddled mix, but Thompson throws these elements around like a kid splattering finger paint every which way. Worse, he fails to concoct a single nerve-wracking set piece; a scheme to steal a vital etching from a van in the Chunnel, for example, has the ingredients for a breakneck sequence, but then resorts to the easiest of clichés.

Prime Target’s unimaginativeness is epitomized by its title and extends to its late faux-bombshells about the reasons these disparate forces covet what’s inside Edward’s head.

Ultimately more frustrating, though, is its inability to convey the supposed magic of math—its artistry, its mystery, and its essential role in every facet of modern life. For all the scribblings depicted throughout, Thompson treats his central subject as an abstract commodity that’s wanted by many and mastered by a few, with Edward ultimately positioned as a sort of super-John Nash with the power to revolutionize civilization by writing equations on a translucent panel or white board.

Alas, there’s nothing beautiful about Edward’s mind, nor anything gripping about this misbegotten attempt at an espionage-by-way-of-academia thrill ride.