Neagley review – this violent Reacher spinoff is a glorious hour off from normal life

Jack Reacher’s right-hand woman takes the lead in a show which requires you to think about nothing other than baddies being beaten up Neagley. It’s pronounced “Neely” but after that, honestly, it’s very simple. Neagley is Frances Neagley, Jack Reacher’s friend and former colleague in Reacher (pronounced “Reacher”, though as rarely as possible for our guy is a man of big arms but few words).

That’s the hit series starring Alan Ritchson and his arms as the eponymous hero, a monosyllabic meat-mountain around whom a bestselling series of crime novels by Lee Child has revolved for the last few decades. Reacher is a former military police officer who now goes about breaking the heads and faces of those he deems deserving – “a sort of artisanal fascist”, as the novelist and devoted fan Paraic O’Donnell once matchlessly put it. Neagley was his right-hand woman in the days when he put together a special investigations unit to – uh, investigate…