Prime Target

Following his roles in The White Lotus and One Day, Leo Woodhall stars as brilliant maths student Edward Brooks in Apple TV+’s conspiracy thriller Prime Target. A star athlete and postgraduate, Edward is obsessed with discovering patterns within nature to the point that he puts his quest for knowledge above all social interactions. When he discovers that prime numbers may hold the secret to the universe’s secrets, however, he finds himself become the target of a shadowy organisation who desire to keep his discoveries secret. On its surface, Prime Target houses an intriguing premise, which establishes engaging plot hooks within its opening episodes. The issue, though, is that this show is as dull as its bland protagonist.

It takes some time for the main action to get underway. Most of the opening episode is dedicated to establishing Edward’s aptitude for academics and his lack of social skills, alongside telling audiences how fascinating mathematics is through inspiring metaphors about discovery. When Brooks eventually does express interest in pursuing his theories about prime numbers, it’s completely believable that there could be something to his ideas that secret agencies would want to silence. With additional plot points about a historic discovery, which further gives credence to the postgrad’s thesis, the writers have created a solid foundation to build upon.

The execution of these ideas is unfortunately less exciting than they look on paper. In addition to it taking a substantial amount of time for the wheels of the numbers-based conspiracy to spin into motion, the ways it initially does so are as thrilling as actually researching a postgraduate thesis. Scholarly papers vanish from the library’s online archive in front of Edward’s eyes, his own work is stolen, and he and other promising minds are monitored by a government agency to prevent them from developing something that could prove dangerous. It’s with the latter plot point where it becomes difficult to take the already far-fetched core of the show seriously, with the script playing everything completely straight-faced. A protagonist whose personality doesn’t go beyond being exceptionally good with numbers and terrible with people also doesn’t inject much entertainment despite a solid performance from Woodhall.

While Prime Target’s central conspiracy may be enough to garner some interest, its lifeless plot and main character subtracts much of the interest that its premise inspired.

Andrew Murray

Prime Target is released on Apple TV+ on 22^nd January 2025.

Watch the trailer for Prime Target here: