Ransom (2017)

There are likely to be more to come on a network that only occasionally fails to keep its crime hours in play for multiple seasons. Ransom is easier to take than some of them, and with a hero who doesn’t have to brandish a gun to get the job done.

In general, lack of energy is a problem for this show. It’s missing that electricity that makes investing in yet another great man procedural worth it.

Ransom needs some stirring. Ex-cop Zara Hallam (Nazneen Contractor, “Heroes Reborn”) rounds out the team, and she gets little to do in this hour, a crime one can only hope will be rectified in future episodes.

For what it is--something serviceable to fit in CBS’s Saturday lineup--Ransom will do, but pretty much is a square peg fitting in a square hole.

What is supposed to bring us back to this series is the prospect of regular doses of hostage-taking and hostage-saving, a sort of clickbait of TV plotting. Is there a bigger cliché in law enforcement television than the "put the gun down," "take your finger off the detonator," etc. standoff?

I never shook the feeling that I was watching something that, from cast to the overall aesthetic, we weren't meant to see on American network TV.

A pedestrian procedural, "Ransom" follows the team at Crisis Resolution as they resolve kidnappings and hostage situations in the most rote, CBS fashion you can imagine.

It’s not bad television, really. It’s just by-the-CBS-book television.

A "laundry folder" through and through.

"Ransom" is a perfectly adequate, by-the-numbers broadcast TV thriller. There are a lot of shows just like it, some better, some worse, and they help pay the bills for broadcast networks.