Special Ops: Lioness

Last updated
Special Ops: Lioness
Special Ops Lioness Poster.jpg
Promotional poster
Genre
Created by Taylor Sheridan
Starring
Composer Andrew Lockington
Country of originUnited States
Original languageEnglish
No. of seasons1
No. of episodes8
Production
Executive producers
  • Taylor Sheridan
  • Jill Wagner
  • David Glasser
  • David Hutkin
  • Bob Yari
  • Zoe Saldaña
  • Nicole Kidman
  • Geyer Kosinski
Running time38–57 minutes
Production companies
Original release
Network Paramount+
ReleaseJuly 23, 2023 (2023-07-23) –
present

Lioness, also known as Special Ops: Lioness, [lower-alpha 1] is an American spy thriller television series created by Taylor Sheridan that premiered on July 23, 2023, on Paramount+. [3]

Contents

On May 9, 2024, the series was renewed for a second season. [2] [4] [5]

Premise

Force Recon Marine Cruz Manuelos is recruited into the CIA's Lioness program and tasked with befriending the daughter of a terrorist financer.

Cast

Main

Recurring

Guest

Episodes

No.Title  [7] Directed byWritten by  [8] Original release date  [9]
1"Sacrificial Soldiers" John Hillcoat Taylor Sheridan July 23, 2023 (2023-07-23)
Joe orders a missile dropped on a target together with a 'lioness' when the lioness's tattoo of a cross is discovered. She is unhappy about having made that decision as she tells her boss Kaitlyn Meade. Cruz runs away from her abusive boyfriend after a disagreement between him and his friends. She falls on the door of the Marines office and is later recruited after her unusually high scores, even on the men's scale.
2"The Beating"John HillcoatTaylor SheridanJuly 23, 2023 (2023-07-23)
3"Bruise Like a Fist"Anthony ByrneStory by : Taylor Sheridan and Thomas Brady
Teleplay by : Taylor Sheridan		July 30, 2023 (2023-07-30)
4"The Choice of Failure"Anthony ByrneTaylor SheridanAugust 6, 2023 (2023-08-06)
5"Truth Is the Shrewdest Lie" Paul Cameron Taylor SheridanAugust 13, 2023 (2023-08-13)
6"The Lie Is the Truth"Paul CameronTaylor SheridanAugust 20, 2023 (2023-08-20)
7"Wish the Fight Away"John HillcoatTaylor SheridanAugust 27, 2023 (2023-08-27)
8"Gone Is the Illusion of Order"John HillcoatTaylor SheridanSeptember 3, 2023 (2023-09-03)

Production

Development

Lioness was announced in September 2020 as part of a Paramount+ programming slate unveiling. [10]

The series was renewed for a second season in May 2024. [11] [12] Sheridan penned all eight episodes of the first season and was set to return for the upcoming season as well. [13]

Casting

In February 2022, Zoe Saldaña was cast to star in the series, and joined as an executive producer alongside Nicole Kidman. [14] Laysla De Oliveira joined the cast the following month. [15] In June, Sheridan took over as showrunner of the series from Thomas Brady following the conclusion of the show's writers' room. [16] Casting continued in September, with the additions of Dave Annable, LaMonica Garrett, James Jordan, Austin Hébert, Jonah Wharton and Hannah Love Lanier. [17] [18] In January 2023, Kidman and Michael Kelly joined the cast alongside Morgan Freeman. [19] [20] [21]

On 9 May 2024, it was reported that returning cast members for season two include Zoe Saldaña, Laysla De Oliveira, Michael Kelly, and Nicole Kidman, with Morgan Freeman being promoted to a series regular role. [11] [22] Upon the renewal becoming official on that same date, De Oliveira expressed her excitement about returning to her role as Cruz on her Instagram account. [13]

Filming

Filming began in Delaware in September 2022 [23] and continued in Mallorca in January 2023. [24] In May 2023, it was announced that the series title was changed from Lioness to Special Ops: Lioness [1] although the title card remained unchanged. The title was changed back again when the series was renewed for its second season. [2]

Andrew Lockington composed the soundtrack for the series, having previously worked with Taylor Sheridan in Mayor of Kingstown . Lakeshore Records has released the series' soundtrack.

Inspiration

The series is very loosely based on the premise of "Team Lioness", where in Iraq in 2003 the decision was made to send female soldiers out with patrols, aiming to stop insurgents from using women to smuggle material because male US soldiers found it difficult to search Muslim women. These teams found themselves in direct combat situations, in violation of the Combat Exclusion Policy (changed only a decade later), which hindered the soldiers from getting veteran benefits after service. [25] [26]

Release

Paramount+ unveiled a first-look trailer for the show on 8 June 2023. [27] The eight-part series premiered on 23 July 2023 on Paramount+ with two one-hour episodes, and subsequent episodes released weekly thereafter. [28]

The red carpet premiered for the series, initially slated for 18 July 2023 at the Directors Guild of America Theatre in Los Angeles, was canceled due to the impact of the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike in the United States. [29] This marked one of the first events to be canceled in response to the strike. [30]

Reception

Critical response

The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported a 56% approval rating and an average rating of 6.1/10, based on 36 reviews. The website's critics consensus reads, "Zoe Saldaña provides the energy of a Lioness, but these Special Ops are largely derivative and unconvincing." [31] On Metacritic, it has a weighted average score of 56 out of 100 based on 19 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". [32]

Despite praising the performances of Laysla De Oliveira and Zoe Saldana, Anita Singh of The Telegraph criticized "the one thing that lets the show down is Nicole Kidman as a CIA boss, whose frozen face these days is a total distraction". [33] Brian Lowry of CNN noted that "the series found a receptive audience that has fueled multiple prequels and made the prolific Sheridan’s production kingdom one of the tallest peaks on Paramount Mountain". [34]

Tania Hussain of Collider praised the performance of the cast but criticised the show as "flawed story" and found Taylor Sheridan was struggling to write about women. [35] Another writer from Collider , Michael John Petty, said the series "might work best as a one-and-done story". [36] Angie Han of The Hollywood Reporter criticized the script as "seems to be constructed with the assumption that most of the audience will only be half-watching while scrolling Facebook on their phones anyway" but couldn't deny the fact that "there is one aspect of Special Ops: Lioness that shines through clear as day no matter how much or how little of your focus you’ve directed toward it, and that is its reverence for the U.S. Marine Corps". [37]

Jim Hemphill of IndieWire praised the cinematography work of Paul Cameron as it "breaks all the cinematography rules" and "in Cameron’s hands, even a standard dialogue scene between two actors has extra dynamism and energy that come simply from looking for unorthodox angles or alternating focal lengths in a manner that might seem counterintuitive". [38]

Reviewer Mike Hale, writing for The New York Times , wrote that the show "turned out to be a moody, suspenseful, textured genre piece with characters you cared about," and that "Sheridan found a form, the action thriller, that suits him better than the western soap operas and contemporary crime dramas that he has produced up to now." Initially, when only screening the first episode, Hale wrote the show "looks like an awful lot of other counterterrorism thrillers, with a visceral punch to its action and a ticky-tacky, backlot feel." [39] [40] Also based on the first episode, Variety criticised it as "cliché" and "shameless military propaganda". [25]

Audience viewership

The drama achieved a milestone by becoming the streamer's most-watched worldwide series premiere on launch day at the time, drawing nearly 6 million total viewers in its first week across Paramount+ globally and during a linear preview on the Paramount Network. [2] [41] [42] This record was later surpassed by Lawmen: Bass Reeves , a series produced by Taylor Sheridan for Paramount+. It garnered 7.5 million viewers worldwide within the first 7 days across Paramount+ and during a broadcast sampling run on CBS. [43] Special Ops: Lioness emerged as one of the most-watched global series premieres on Paramount+ in 2023. [2] [44] [45]

Accolades

YearAward ceremonyCategoryNomineeResultRef.
2023 Asia Contents Awards & Global OTT Awards Best CreativeSpecial Ops: LionessNominated [46]
Best Writer Taylor Sheridan Nominated
Best Lead Actress Zoe Saldaña Nominated

See also

Footnotes

  1. ↑ The series was originally announced as Lioness and that was the title used in the first season's title card. The "Special Ops" prefix was added for marketing purposes shortly before the release of season 1, [1] but was dropped as part of the season 2 renewal. [2]

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References

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  2. 1 2 3 4 5 Rice, Lynette (May 9, 2024). "'Lioness' Renewed For Second Season By Paramount+". Deadline . Archived from the original on May 9, 2024. Retrieved May 9, 2024.
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  4. ↑ McPherson, Chirs (May 9, 2024). "'Special Ops: Lioness' Heads on Another Mission With Season 2 Renewal on Paramount+". Collider . Archived from the original on May 9, 2024. Retrieved May 11, 2024.
  5. ↑ Martin, Annie (May 9, 2024). "'Lioness': Zoe Saldana, Nicole Kidman series renewed for Season 2". United Press International . Archived from the original on May 9, 2024. Retrieved May 12, 2024.
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  32. ↑ "Special Ops: Lioness: Season 1". Metacritic . Fandom, Inc. Retrieved July 24, 2023.
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  38. ↑ Hemphill, Jim (July 24, 2023). "Taylor Sheridan's 'Special Ops: Lioness' Breaks All the Cinematography Rules — and It Works". IndieWire. Archived from the original on July 24, 2023. Retrieved March 7, 2024.
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  46. ↑ Park, Jae-hwan (September 12, 2023). "아시아콘텐츠어워즈&글로벌OTT어워즈 후보작 발표.. "더 글로리, 무빙, 만장적계절, 그리고 퍼스트러브하츠코이" [Asian Content Awards & Global OTT Awards Nominees Announced... "The Glory, Moving, All Seasons, and First Love Hatsukoi"] (in Korean). KBS. Retrieved September 12, 2023– via Naver.
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