Taylor Sheridan’s ‘Special Ops: Lioness,’ Starring Nicole Kidman and Zoe Saldana, Is Shameless Military Propaganda: TV Review

The women in Taylor Sheridan projects tend to be lone wolves. They also tend to fit into specific, narrow archetypes: the vulnerable naif (Kate Macer in Sicario Jane Banner in Wind River the ferocious badass (Beth Dutton in Yellowstone Hannah Faber in Those Who Wish Me Dead the steely matriarch (Beths ancestors Margaret and Cara, who anchor the Yellowstone prequel series 1883 and 1923). The screenwriter is himself a lone wolf, posing for magazine covers in a cowboy hat while denigrating the use of writers rooms, and rose to the top of Hollywoods hierarchy in part through a shameless embrace of genre tropes.

Sheridans latest series for the streaming service Paramount+ takes its title from another kind of predator one who travels in packs. Special Ops: Lioness isnt just the first Sheridan show to feature a true multiplicity of female leads; its also the first to have an explicitly gendered premise. But just because Lioness features more women protagonists doesnt mean Sheridan has grown any more nuanced in his depiction of them.

Loosely very loosely based on a real CIA program, Lioness follows an initiative that embeds undercover agents with high-value terrorism targets, forming relationships with suspected leaders wives, girlfriends and female family members to gather intelligence. (Sheridans inspiration was in fact designed to allow religiously sensitive, same-sex body searches of female suspects, here a jumping-off point into the creative deep end.) In the opening scene, Lioness leader Joe (Zoe Saldaa) loses an operative when her cover is blown, forcing Joe to call in a drone strike that kills the spy along with her adversaries. As a replacement, Joe recruits Cruz Manuelos (Laysla De Oliveira), a Marine whose ability to do pull ups is presented as qualification for the job.

Sheridan has long cultivated an image in contrast with liberal cultural elites without quite aligning with their opposite. Yellowstone was famously rejected by HBO before earning a reputation as the red state Succession, though its politics have always been more ambiguous or maybe just more muddled than straight conservatism. As the above synopsis implies, Lioness has no such ambiguity. The show is an unabashed work of military propaganda that positions the United States Armed Forces as the strong who protect the weak, a group that apparently includes the entire Middle East as well as vulnerable members of U.S. society.

In the single chapter of the eight-episode season provided to critics despite a two-episode premiere theres no hint of curiosity about the circumstances that pit the Lioness team against the Islamic State in Iraq despite the lip service paid to establishing a democracy after the fall of Saddam Hussein. There is, however, a stunningly ham-fisted scene in which a younger Cruz runs from her violent abuser and into a recruitment office, where an imposing officer scares off her persecutor before coining the kind of faux-profound bon mot thats a signature of Sheridan dialogue: In war, if you aint cheatin, you aint tryin. Cruz quotes her onetime savior when Joe explains the premise of the Lioness program, underscoring the implication that its a global superpowers job to look out for the underdog by any means necessary. If you dont agree with that vision of U.S. hegemony, this is not the show for you.

Lioness also stars and is executive produced by Nicole Kidman, whose presence on TV has gone from a momentous event to disconcertingly normal in just a few years. But Kidman appears in only a single scene of the series premiere as Joes supervisor, admonishing her for losing her direct report. (Intensifying the shows right-wing overtones, the first Lioness mole is found out when one of her companions spots a Christian tattoo.) Rather than conduct a more careful search for her next mentee, Joe selects Cruz, a ferocious combatant who has no background we know of in either espionage or Iraqi language and culture. She can, however, shotgun a beer.

By the end of the first episode, penned by Sheridan and directed by John Hillcoat, Cruz has miraculously ingratiated herself with a potential asset. Weve also gotten a glimpse of Joes home life, which includes two daughters and a husband who serves as their primary parent while his wife is off at war. Sheridan doesnt just give the leads of Lioness masculine names like Joe and Cruz he also gives them stereotypically masculine conflicts like feeling estranged from their children due to a stressful job. Even Cruzs abuse segues into a storyline in which her physical strength is equated with her worth.

It is perhaps predictable that the Sheridan take on pop feminism would weaponize womens liberation in service of the military industrial complex. After all, that rhetorical sleight of hand is as much a clich as the rest of Lioness, which shows the strain of a single writer cranking out scripts for each of his half-dozen shows on air. Lioness may be a first for its creator in some respects, but in others, its more of the same.

The first two episodes of Special Ops: Lioness will premiere on Paramount+ on July 23, with future episodes airing weekly on Sundays.