‘Prime Target’ Review: Apple TV+’s Math-Themed Conspiracy Thriller Doesn’t Add Up to Much

There’s not much I remember about high-school calculus, more than two decades since my last class. But one thing I do recall being taught over and over was the importance of showing the math. How you built your case and demonstrated your logic was just as important, we were told, as whether you got to the right answer.

The new conspiracy thriller Prime Target gets to the right answer, I suppose, in that it looks expensive (there’s that Apple TV+ money), serves up basically competent if unmemorable action and raises worthwhile if not exactly novel debates. But it does not show the math, serving two-dimensional pawns instead of three-dimensional characters and lofty-sounding speeches instead of nuanced dialogue — and, as a result, fails to add up to much at all.

Its protagonist, Ed (Leo Woodall), is a Cambridge postgrad on the verge of creating a theorem to find prime numbers. To him, the work is its own higher calling, a noble attempt to engage with the mysteries of the universe. “What if God’s cipher here on Earth, the DNA of existence, is actually prime numbers?” he posits to a professor (David Morrissey) who, for reasons both obvious and initially mysterious, looks more than a little disturbed by the fervor in his eyes.

But if Ed has no interest in the practical applications of his research, others certainly do. Among those watching closely are the NSA, who’ve determined that Ed’s research could undermine the entire digital security infrastructure. His formula is essentially a weapon with the potential to destroy the world — or at least privacy as we know it, breaking the locks on everything from bank accounts to national defense systems. This makes Ed a sort of modern Oppenheimer figure, and lest you be slow to make that comparison on your own, creator Steve Thompson drops references to the father of the atom bomb in both the first 10 minutes of the premiere and the last 10 minutes of the season finale.

But such self-important affectation does the series few favors when what it actually delivers is a grab bag of underwritten characters and underbaked ideas. Ed is a singular genius cut from exactly the same cloth as every other singular genius who’s graced our screens: ambitious, brilliant, solitary and a bit quirky. Other than his passion for math (or “maths,” since he’s British) he has no interiority to speak of. Woodall tamps down the slightly skeevy, slightly tragic charm that worked so well for him in One Day and The White Lotus, and while I’m not convinced he wears “reticent intellectual” quite as well, I also don’t know that it’s totally his fault.

Ed’s co-lead, technology whiz Taylah (Quintessa Swindell), is less convincing still, with a personality that mutates to serve the plot. The first time we meet her, she’s an NSA agent whose job is spying on prominent mathematicians through hidden cameras planted in their offices and bedrooms. A few episodes later, she’s earnestly lecturing Ed on morality, accountability and the importance of privacy. I wish I could say this counted as character development, especially given how fervently Swindell tries to sell the righteous indignation. But since Prime Target never bothers to engage with any internal conflict on her part, it simply reads as a baffling inconsistency.

The pair first cross paths about three episodes in, when Taylah realizes the same people after Ed are coming after her. But despite spending most of the rest of the eight-part season together, the chemistry between them never progresses beyond that of two strangers stuck together by circumstance. Prime Target in general keeps human relationships at an arm’s length, to the point that when one character reveals what should be a shocking and devastating betrayal against a loved one, the emotions hardly register as an afterthought.

As Taylah and Ed flee from country to country — including a stop in Iraq to see Sidse Babett Knudsen’s Andrea, an antiquities expert who functions more as a plot mechanism than a third-billed lead — they dutifully endure the car chases and cat-and-mouse games you’d expect from the genre, with less cleverness than you might hope for from these characters. At least the scenes tend to look pretty enough (Brady Hood directed all episodes), even if I could do with slightly fewer shots of spiral staircases meant to make us think of Fibonacci sequences or something.

Their flight does, thankfully, bring them into contact with the two performances on the show that actually work. One comes from Martha Plimpton as Jane, Taylah’s NSA superior. She’s believable as an unflappable boss lady who can stare down a bully’s threat without so much as blinking an eye, but Plimpton also imbues her with a subtle and disarming sense of warmth — especially when it comes to Taylah, with whom she shares a complicated history and a genuine mutual affection. In a drama that can otherwise feel abstract and remote, she comes off as refreshingly human.

The other is Harry Lloyd (Game of Thrones) as Jane’s boss Andrew, a scenery-chewing snake in slim-fit suits who can’t even say the word “love” without twisting his lip into a sneer. As a character he’s written with no more nuance or depth than any other, but he is much more vividly drawn. Lloyd’s is a performance that feels dropped in from an entirely different series, populated by clear-cut heroes and cackling villains and punctuated by plenty of big, dumb action. It would be one with no room for any of Prime Target‘s high-minded sermonizing about ethics or ideals or the hidden beauties of the universe. And given how little those ultimately amount to on this show anyway, it’d probably be better for it.