TV Review – NBC’s The Brave S01

Six years after Showtime’s Homeland introduced U.S. audiences to CIA operative Carrie Mathieson, network TV decides to give military dramas a try with not just one or two, but three new military series.
The Brave follows “intelligence analysts in Washington who uncover and interpret threats and the Special Forces operators tasked with eliminating them”. Created by Dean Georgaris, he aims to show the human resiliency and human ingenuity of those part of Special Forces.
Deputy Director Patricia Campbell (Anne Heche) of the Defense Intelligence Agency directs operations out of DC, showing up to work despite losing her son in combat just 10 days earlier (clearly a plot point that will play into future episodes) with Ground Force Commander Adam Dalton (Mike Vogel) leading his Special Forces team and getting the bulk of screen time in episode one. High regards to NBC for providing Dalton with perhaps the most diverse cast on TV made up of a Muslim intelligence agent, African-American communications officer, Caucasian combat medic, and woman sniper.
Right from the start, we are thrown into a fun and, at times, intense ride when Dr. Kimberly Wells (Alix Wilton Regan), a Doctors Without Borders volunteer, is kidnapped by a Syrian terrorist organization in Damascus. What first seems like a typical kidnapping for ransom turns out to be much more as a result of a botched U.S. assassination attempt on terrorist leader, Burhan Baghdadi. Dalton’s team is tasked with a rescue mission that becomes secondary and a difficult decision on what a U.S. citizen’s life is worth. If you’ve seen the trailer, you already know some of the spoilers but this is mission still worth watching to see how it plays out.
Without early access to CBS’s Seal Team and CW’s Valor, it’s difficult to say where The Brave will rank among the other new military dramas, but it appears that Anne Heche may have finally found a series that will stick around for more than one season and that The Brave may provide network TV with its first quality military show since the introduction of NCIS in 2003. When you think about the difficulty of pulling this off when cable networks provide larger budgets than most network series and that network stations are forced to minimize on-screen violence, it makes this feat even more impressive. Most important will be the series ability to not got mired down in moles, coups, and silly story lines like Fox’s later seasons of 24 or ABC’s more recent Designated Survivor.
With quality comedy Will & Grace returning to the airwaves and hottest drama This Is Us starting their second season, it appears that NBC may, once again, be “Must See TV”.