Six: Season 1

The real Navy SEAL Team Six gained renown as the special force that took down Osama bin Laden, but despite being broadcast on the History Network, this series is not a documentary about the unit's exploits but rather a fictional drama centering on the soldiers' domestic lives and dangerous assignments. The initial season focuses on an assault on a Boko Haram enclave in Nigeria, where former Team Six leader Rip Taggart (Walton Goggins)—now a private security contractor—is being held captive along with some kidnapped schoolchildren. The mission takes a sudden turn when they learn that Taggart has fallen into the hands of a Taliban terrorist and his American lieutenant, who blames Taggart for the death of his brother during an earlier mission in Afghanistan. The setting then shifts to a terrorist camp in Chad, where the hostages have been moved. Six works best during its well-staged and executed action sequences, rather than in its attempts to humanize the team members, which come across as formulaic. While Barry Sloane and Kyle Schmid are adequate as the most prominent members of the team (the villains are uniformly depicted in one-dimensional terms), it is Goggins who dominates the season as a man struggling to come to terms with the consequences of his decisions. Compiling all eight episodes from the 2017 debut season, this is a strong optional purchase. (F. Swietek)