TV-14 | 8 episodes | Thriller | 2025
In England, schools use the term “maths” instead of math, but the principles remain constant. As everyone should remember from school, a prime number is only divisible by itself and one (1). This lack of factors make primes particularly useful in cryptology. Indeed, most encryption systems are based on primes, because of their uniqueness and unpredictability.
However, Edward Brooks (Leo Woodall) could possibly render such encryption systems obsolete with his postgraduate research on primes at Cambridge. Consequently, many vested interests want to stop or steal Brooks’s revolutionary work in creator Steve Thompson’s eight-episode conspiracy thriller “Prime Target.”
Brooks is about as socially awkward as any other mathematical genius you might have seen on-screen. Currently, he only maintains one close relationship. Unfortunately, his former mentor, retired Prof. Raymond Osborne (Joseph Mydell), suffers from Alzheimer’s, but he still has good days, allowing him to teach some life lessons to his protégé (or at least try).
Brooks considers professor Robert Mallinder (David Morrissey) a poor substitute for Osborne, especially when his new faculty advisor discourages his prime number study. Yet, Mallinder better understands the dangerous economic and national security implications of predicting patterns within primes.
Prime in the Past
Soon, Mallinder leads Sanders to Brooks as well as the mathematics professor’s wife, Prof. Andrea Lavin (Sidse Babett Knudsen). She’s an archaeologist rather than a mathematician, but when she shows Brooks and Mallinder pictures of the mysterious mathematical sequences inscribed on the walls of an excavation site she will soon join, they both flip out. Evidently, they aren’t the only ones to have a strong reaction. Soon after Sanders uploads pictures of the enigmatic formula, or whatever it might be, assassins start targeting the staff of Sanders’s clandestine surveillance station.
Sanders’s boss (and godmother) Jane Torres (Martha Plimpton) wants her to come in from the field, for her own protection. Instead, the rogue agent heads to Cambridge to protect Brooks. Regretfully, Sanders realizes her surveillance reports unintentionally led to her colleagues’ deaths. She also carries the guilt of a drunk-driving accident that killed her lover several years prior, so she hopes to save Brooks’s life, as a small measure of atonement.
Obviously, the power to unencrypt (and expose) all financial data and state secrets could ruin economies and nations. “Prime Target” covers similar ground as the 1992 Robert Redford film “Sneakers,” but it’s more balanced in its depiction of the various sinister factions coveting such power; this includes the “deep state” (represented by semi-rogue elements in the NSA) and outside ideological extremists.
Tighter Editing Needed
The thriller aspects of “Prime Target” don’t consistently thrill. Arguably, the eight episodes, all of which were helmed by Brady Hood, could have easily been edited and compressed into a tighter, more intense half dozen installments. The action sequences, when they finally come, also look rather pedestrian.However, the detour to the Iraqi archaeological site offers intriguing complications in the tradition of “The Da Vinci Code.” But “Prime Target” fails to convincingly explain how the strange inscriptions advance Brooks’s “Prime Finder” theorem. Granted, maybe you need to be a mathematician to fully understand, but Thompson never provides decent sounding double-talk.
Solid Supporting Cast
Frankly, some of the best work comes from the colorful and accomplished supporting cast, particularly Mydell, who portrays the slowly failing Prof. Osborne with dignity and warmth. Plimpton earns considerable laughs chewing the scenery as Torres, the ruthless and sarcastic (but weirdly likable) NSA spymaster. Indeed, her scenes with Swindell crackle with intelligence.
Plus, Stephen Rea is acutely cynical as Prof. James Alderman, the dean-like figure of Brooks’s Cambridge college. As Lavin and Mallinder respectively, Knudsen and Morrissey contribute considerable emotional depth during their married characters’ times of extreme personal crisis. Unfortunately, Jason Flemyng has limited screen time as Stephen Patrick Nield, the head of a dodgy think-tank unofficially affiliated with the secret NSA faction, but he still adds to the sinister vibes.
“Prime Target” certainly leaves viewers skeptical of the ethics and judgment of advanced mathematical and scientific researchers and institutions. Some viewers might be annoyed by the messy third act, but Thompson’s willingness to upend expectations boosts the stakes for all the major characters. However, he and Hood still have trouble balancing the necessary rather dry talk with more dramatic danger and intrigue. A provocative but far from perfect effort.
