Within the first few minutes of this show we have established that our sexy lead female role has a spy love interest and is pregnant with his child although he doesn't know this yet. She arranges to meet to tell him this after a job, but she is betrayed and, presumably, killed. From this basic setup you could probably scribble down some things that you presume will come back later and you'd probably be right. Anyway, jump to one year later and our pouty spy Sam is still alive and training in the woods for her return. Despite working in a professional full of secrets, betrayal and death, her employers allow Sam to stroll back into the job on the basis that they cannot do without her (although have managed to do so for a year). No sooner has she easily got inside that organisation then she follows that up by getting inside the house of her client's target – the Turners.
From here the show tries to keep things moving with the usual story lines of moles, betrayal, sacrifice and so on, but it never really manages to sell any of it. The main problem is the writing since it always seems to take the line of least resistance and yet does so without conviction – I mean the plot twists and turns of 24 were hardly the most convincing, but that show threw itself into them and went for entertainment value. Hunted on the other hand seems unsure of what it is doing and ends up being some sort of awkward drama built on weak foundations. It isn't terrible by any means, it just feels so incredibly routine and lacking in spark; so unlikely plot developments abound (in particular the final episode, which is quite silly it how it resolves itself) but throughout there is so much that doesn't really do much more than fill time.
Dialogue is regularly clunky and our characters change to suit whatever the story needs them to be or do; my personal favourite is Sam's inability to learn that if you have a gun then you don't really need to push it directly into the chest of someone else because that introduces the risk of being disarmed – which happens several episodes in a row to her, because the writer needs it to. The performances don't have too much to play with and they reflect the material by hanging around in a murky world between serious drama and silly spy action – they all try for darkness but they are trying without much help. George pouts like her life depends on it but she has no character to work with and never rings true; she is a decent presence and does reasonable well considering, but not that well. Malahide enjoys himself with an obvious villain but Moore never works out who he is. The others do okay, although that is just what is asked of them, the only one that riled me was Akinnuoye-Agbaje who is a much better presence than material given him with the office-bound and slighty bored character with a family subplot that goes nowhere.
The first season ends with the potential for the show to continue but aside from the narrative allowing this, there is little else that would justify this. The material was no good and felt like it was always a case of "good enough"; the performances suffered because of this and the whole thing seems unconvincing and with shoddy writing throughout. As a background distraction maybe it has its merits but otherwise it was roundly average with almost nothing to really recommend it for.
