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Wide open spaces seem to be attractive to TV program producers. We've seen “Longmire,” “Joe Pickett,” and “Big Sky,” not to mention the “Yellowstone” phenomenon, capture national attention, at least for a while.
Let's see if “Tracker,” a CBS series about survivors and finders of missing persons, has a similar impact.
Official trailer for CBS' Tracker (2024) from Rotten Tomatoes TV on YouTube.
When Westerns were king of television in the 1950s and 1960s, we could watch endless stories unfold against the backdrop of mountains, deserts, and frontier towns. Before The Lone Ranger or Matt Dillon or the cowboys from “The Virginian” rode off into the sunset, they and dozens of other shows reinforced the concept of the frontier to modern audiences.
The idea of distancing yourself from “civilization” has appeal to many people, at least until it gets a little rough around the edges. One of my favorite elements in Craig Johnson's books, on which the “Longmire” series is based, is that the characters have to stand in certain spots in town to receive a cell phone signal. That means it won't happen. In “Yellowstone,” John Dutton, played by Kevin Costner, goes camping in search of a prison cell. I don't Receive a call.
I'm sure I'm not the only one who thinks “Yellowstone” would have been better off depicting life on the Dutton ranch rather than life in the boardroom. The show's ratings success and its place in our shared pop culture consciousness reinforced the “get away from it all” feeling sought after in every episode.
“Tracker” aims to do the same. Justin Hartley, who you may know from “This is Us'' and “Smallville,'' plays Colter Shaw (now called “The Final Frontier'' if I've ever heard of it). And as the episode unfolds, we learn that he and his brother grew up “off and on.” Grid” with mom and dad. It was not an idyllic life. Apparently the older Shaw was running away from his mistakes, and the children were traumatized by life on the run.
But Colter has learned a lot of useful knowledge from those days, which he applies to his work as a “rewardist” (an odd name for his job). He goes to remote areas to find lost hikers and climbers, and to small towns to find people. People drawn into cults.
In other words, he's a pursuer, and he's doing it at a price.
Into the Wild
For as long as wilderness adventures have been played out on our televisions, there have been characters who do the right thing for the money. Granted, Matt Dillon never made more than a marshal's salary, but bounty hunters and troubleshooters like “Paladin” ran through the wilderness with a reward in mind. From the late 1950s to the early 1960s, Paladin was the main character on the show “Have Gun, Will Travel,” for which he commanded a hefty salary of $1,000 for each job. In “Tracker,” Colter Shaw will claim up to $50,000 or receive a $20,000 reward offer.
The script for “Tracker'' particularly emphasizes how Shaw enters into verbal contracts with customers and collects checks after a person is found. This adds realism to the series. All the equipment and all the “helpers” the show uses doesn't come cheap.
At one point, someone asks Shaw why he's floating around here and there helping people. It's one of television's oldest tropes, a theme that describes every series from “Nameless Dogs” to “The Fugitive” to “The Incredible Hulk.” However, the show's work is more intentional in how it affects people than Hulk's run. inch.
“Tracker” also follows the style of many police procedurals, with the protagonist taking on some new case each week and solving it by the end of the episode. In “Tracker”, Shaw is not a cop, so the arrest must be made by someone else.
“Tracker” has a series aspect. At the beginning of the season, viewers were given bits and pieces of information about the show's past and family. Why did his father, a professor, fall from grace? What did Shaw's brother Russell do? Why is he trying to contact Colter now? What is Shaw's mother hiding?
One of the mysteries we want to solve is who his allies and collaborators are. Eric Glaze is Bob's “man in the chair,” as this type of character was referred to in one of the Spider-Man movies, a technological wizard who can find answers to any questions Shaw calls from the field. Masters, Robin Weigert and Abby McEnany play Teddy and Velma, a couple who discover the case Shaw is following and worry about Shaw along the way.
a certain skill set
Beyond their ability to spot footprints on terrain, the show's characters are packed with outdoor know-how, including how long they can survive hypothermia. He learned all this from his survivalist father. Shaw, like Jack Reacher from the Reacher series, is also a master of numbers.
So far in “Tracker,” Shaw hasn't been seen putting his ear to the rails to hear oncoming trains or putting his fingers in the wind to read the wind, but on rough ground, A lot comes from his ability to track tracks. . And he makes good use of technology (often provided by support from his staff) to find talent.
“Tracker” takes place in several beautiful locations. The pilot, which aired after the Super Bowl, is set around the city of Klamath Falls, Oregon. Later episodes revolve around Missoula, Montana, and Mount Shasta, California.
Check out how remote and rural the upcoming “Trucker” storyline will be with two cities in the upcoming episodes: “St. Louis” and “Lexington.”
One thing that “Tracker” has in common with series like “Longmire,” “Big Sky,” and “Joe Pickett” is that they are all based on books by famous authors. “Tracker” is taken from author Jeffrey Deaver's 2019 thriller “The Never Game,” which has had three sequels so far. Deaver is perhaps best known as the author of Lincoln Rhyme's “The Bone Collector.”
Deaver's other works are not confined to remote areas like most of Johnson's or CJ Box's novels, but so far “Tracker” is a pilot written by Ben H. Winters; It creates an atmosphere of appreciation and respect for nature. And that danger seems familiar to his previous hits.
Tracker is currently airing on CBS and available to stream on Paramount+ and Pluto TV.
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