Amazon's new TV show 'Jack Ryan' has gotten a lukewarm reception from critics, but audiences love it

Amazon

John Krasinski in "Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan."

• Critics have been lukewarm on the new Amazon series "Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan," but audiences are into it.
• The series premiered on Amazon Prime last Friday, and it currently has a 72% critic rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Amazon's latest series, "Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan," received mixed reviews from TV critics ahead of its premiere, but audiences have greeted it with a warmer reception after its debut last Friday.

John Krasinski ("A Quiet Place") stars as Ryan, an anti-terrorist CIA operative, in the first TV series take on a character that originated in a series of novels by Tom Clancy. The character has also appeared in five previous film adaptations, beginning with 1984's "The Hunt for Red October."

Amazon has described the series as tracking Ryan's efforts in "a deadly game of cat and mouse throughout Europe and the Middle East, with a rising terrorist figurehead preparing for a massive attack against the US and her allies."

The show currently has a 72% "fresh" rating among critics on Rotten Tomatoes, but it stands at a 90% audience rating on the site.

Critics have ranged from positive to negative on the series, with reviewers on both sides of the spectrum calling Krasinski's Ryan a bland character.

"Amazon's 'Jack Ryan' succeeds by spinning a suspenseful, big-budget adventure about terrorism around the blandest action hero in the business," NPR's Eric Duggan wrote in a review.

"It's hardly a good thing when you realize a series could be improved if only the producers edited out the star," Mark A. Perigard wrote for the Boston Herald.

But fans of the series have reacted to it more positively than critics. 66% of Amazon users have given it a 5-star rating on the show's Prime page, with the average rating being 4.1 stars.

"This isn't the Jack Ryan of the novels, nor the Jack Ryan of the movies. It's a fresh, relevant take on the character set against the backdrop of terrorism in our world today," Amazon user SpyMagician wrote in a 5-star review. "The plot is intricate and the antagonist is extremely well fleshed out. Not at all a cookie cutter movie terrorist, but a character with depth that makes his actions all the more terrifying."

Watch the series on Amazon Prime.