Jack Ryan

[geonuc]

Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan, that is. The guy famously played by Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford and Ben Affleck in various movies.

I watched the first season of the Amazon Prime series - not bad if you like that sort of thing (I do). Interestingly, I read somewhere about how Ryan has been portrayed in the films and how various details of his character differ from Clancy's novels. For instance, unlike what we saw in Hunt For Red October (and maybe the other films, I don't remember), Ryan was not a US Naval Academy graduate. He went to Boston College. In this series, the story has him as a BC guy but also an Afghanistan war vet, which wasn't in the novels.

Anyway, I thought the series was well done - Ryan is a complex but likeable character. The portrayal of Jim Greer (Admiral James Greer in the novel and movies) is a bit different and unsettling, though. I keep wanting James Earl Jones to show up.

[Thumper]

If you're used to James Earl Jones playing a part, I imagine it could be difficult getting comfortable with someone else in the role. I think he played a similar character in HBO's "By Dawn's Early Light." Gruff, grizzled, but ultimately lovable.