| Special Ops: Lioness | |
|---|---|
 Promotional poster | |
| Genre | |
| Created by | Taylor Sheridan |
| Starring |
|
| Composer | Andrew Lockington |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Original language | English |
| No. of seasons | 1 |
| No. of episodes | 8 |
| Production | |
| Executive producers |
|
| Running time | 38–57 minutes |
| Production companies |
|
| Original release | |
| Network | Paramount+ |
| Release | July 23, 2023 – present |
Special Ops: Lioness is an American spy thriller television series created by Taylor Sheridan that premiered on July 23, 2023, on Paramount+. [1]
Force Recon Marine Cruz Manuelos is recruited into the CIA's Lioness program and tasked with befriending the daughter of a terrorist financer.
A documentary titled Lioness [3] covered one of the first members of Team Lioness in Ramadi, Iraq between 2003 and 2004. Since its release in 2008, Lioness has contributed significantly to the mainstreaming of the movement to recognize and respond to the needs of American servicewomen.
| No. | Title [4] | Directed by | Written by [5] | Original release date [6] | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | "Sacrificial Soldiers" | John Hillcoat | Taylor Sheridan | July 23, 2023 | |
| 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 Hillcoat | Taylor Sheridan | July 23, 2023 | |
| 3 | "Bruise Like a Fist" | Anthony Byrne | Story by : Taylor Sheridan and Thomas Brady Teleplay by : Taylor Sheridan | July 30, 2023 | |
| 4 | "The Choice of Failure" | Anthony Byrne | Taylor Sheridan | August 6, 2023 | |
| 5 | "Truth Is the Shrewdest Lie" | Paul Cameron | Taylor Sheridan | August 13, 2023 | |
| 6 | "The Lie Is the Truth" | Paul Cameron | Taylor Sheridan | August 20, 2023 | |
| 7 | "Wish the Fight Away" | John Hillcoat | Taylor Sheridan | August 27, 2023 | |
| 8 | "Gone Is the Illusion of Order" | John Hillcoat | Taylor Sheridan | September 3, 2023 | |
Lioness was announced in September 2020 as part of a Paramount+ programming slate unveiling. [7] In February 2022, Zoe Saldaña was cast to star in the series, and joined as an executive producer alongside Nicole Kidman. [8] Laysla De Oliveira joined the cast the following month. [9] In June, Sheridan took over as showrunner of the series from Thomas Brady following the conclusion of the show's writers' room. [10] Casting continued in September, with the additions of Dave Annable, LaMonica Garrett, James Jordan, Austin Hébert, Jonah Wharton and Hannah Love Lanier. [11] [12] In January 2023, Kidman and Michael Kelly joined the cast alongside Morgan Freeman. [13] [14] [15]
Filming began in Delaware in September 2022 [16] and continued in Mallorca in January 2023. [17] In May 2023, it was announced that the series title was changed from Lioness to Special Ops: Lioness [18] although the title card remained unchanged.
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.
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. [19] [20]
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." [21] On Metacritic, it has a weighted average score of 56 out of 100 based on 19 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". [22]
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". [23] 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". [24]
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. [25] Another writer from Collider , Michael John Petty, said the series "might work best as a one-and-done story". [26] 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". [27]
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". [28]
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." [29] [30] Also based on the first episode, Variety criticised it as "cliché" and "shameless military propaganda". [19]
| Award ceremony | Year | Category | Nominee | Result | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Asia Contents Awards & Global OTT Awards | 2023 | Best Creative | Special Ops: Lioness | Nominated | [31] |
| Best Writer | Taylor Sheridan | Nominated | |||
| Best Lead Actress | Zoe Saldaña | Nominated | |||
Zoë Yadira Saldaña-Perego is an American actress. Known for her work in many franchise, she has starred in four of the highest-grossing films of all time. Films she has appeared in have grossed more than $15 billion worldwide and, as of 2024, she is the highest-grossing film actress. Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2023.
David Rodman Annable is an American actor. His roles include Justin Walker on the ABC television drama Brothers & Sisters (2006–11), Henry Martin on the ABC supernatural drama 666 Park Avenue (2012–13), Pierce Harrison on the NBC medical drama Heartbeat (2016), and Neil on the Paramount+ spy series Special Ops: Lioness (2023).
Liane Moriarty is an Australian author. She has written nine novels, including the New York Times best sellers Big Little Lies and Nine Perfect Strangers, which were adapted into television series for HBO and Hulu, respectively.
Blossom Films is a production company founded by American-born Australian actress Nicole Kidman in 2010. The first production by the company was the film Rabbit Hole, based on the play of the same name by David Lindsay-Abaire.
American-born Australian actress and producer Nicole Kidman has appeared in numerous film and television projects, as well as in theatre productions. She made her film debut in the Australian drama Bush Christmas in 1983. Four years later, she starred in the television miniseries Bangkok Hilton, for which she received the AACTA Award for Best Lead Actress in a Television Drama. Her breakthrough role was as a married woman trapped on a yacht with a murderer in the 1989 thriller Dead Calm. She followed this with her Hollywood debut opposite Tom Cruise in Tony Scott's auto-racing film Days of Thunder (1990). Her role as a homicidal weather forecaster in Gus Van Sant's crime comedy-drama To Die For garnered Kidman a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Comedy or Musical in 1996. She worked with Cruise again on Ron Howard's Far and Away (1992) and Stanley Kubrick's erotic thriller Eyes Wide Shut in 1999.
Yellowstone is an American neo-Western drama television series created by Taylor Sheridan and John Linson that premiered on June 20, 2018, on Paramount Network. The series stars Kevin Costner, Luke Grimes, Kelly Reilly, Wes Bentley, Cole Hauser, Kelsey Asbille, and Gil Birmingham. The series follows the conflicts along the shared borders of the Yellowstone Ranch, a large cattle ranch, the Broken Rock Indian reservation, Yellowstone National Park and land developers. The fifth season will be its last and is followed by a sequel series titled 2024. The first part of the fifth and final season premiered on November 13, 2022, with the second part scheduled to premiere on November 10, 2024.
From Scratch is an American romance drama television miniseries created by Attica Locke and Tembi Locke for Netflix. Inspired by Tembi Locke's memoir of the same name, it stars Zoe Saldaña and Eugenio Mastrandrea. Its eight episodes premiered on October 21, 2022. Attica Locke was series showrunner.
Nine Perfect Strangers is an American drama television series based on the 2018 novel of the same name by Liane Moriarty. Created by David E. Kelley who also developed the series alongside John-Henry Butterworth, the series premiered on August 18, 2021, on Hulu.
Laysla de Oliveira is a Canadian actress. She is known for her roles as Dodge in the Netflix series Locke & Key, Cruz Manuelos in the Paramount+ spy series Special Ops: Lioness, Veronica in the drama film Guest of Honour, and Becky DeMuth in the horror film In the Tall Grass.
Made Up Stories is a film and television development and production company founded in 2017 by producer Bruna Papandrea that "[champions] women on and off the screen." The company has offices in Los Angeles and Sydney.
The Terminal List is an American action thriller television series created by David DiGilio, based on Jack Carr's 2018 novel of the same name. The series tells the story of a Navy SEAL who seeks to avenge the murder of his family. It stars Chris Pratt, Constance Wu, Taylor Kitsch, Riley Keough, Arlo Mertz, and Jeanne Tripplehorn.
Nine Perfect Strangers is a 2018 novel by Australian author Liane Moriarty. It was published on September 18, 2018 by Macmillan Australia. It is a New York Times Bestseller.
Landman is an upcoming American drama television series created by Taylor Sheridan, based on the Boomtown podcast by Christian Wallace. It is set to premiere on Paramount+.
Mayor of Kingstown is an American crime thriller television series created by Taylor Sheridan and Hugh Dillon. The series premiered on November 14, 2021, on Paramount+. In February 2022, the series was renewed for a second season, which premiered on January 15, 2023. In September 2023, the series was renewed for a third season.
1883 is an American Western drama television miniseries created by Taylor Sheridan that premiered on December 19, 2021, on Paramount+. The series stars Tim McGraw, Faith Hill, Sam Elliott, Isabel May, LaMonica Garrett, Marc Rissmann, Audie Rick, Eric Nelsen, and James Landry Hébert. The story is chronologically the first of several prequels to Sheridan's Yellowstone and details how the Duttons came to own the land that became the Yellowstone Ranch.
1923 is an American Western drama television series that premiered on December 18, 2022, on Paramount+. The series is a prequel to the Paramount Network series Yellowstone and serves as a sequel to the series 1883, with Isabel May reprising her role from the latter as narrator Elsa Dutton. In February 2023, the series was renewed for a second season of eight episodes.
Lawmen: Bass Reeves is an American Western television miniseries created by Chad Feehan, who also serves as showrunner, and executive produced by Taylor Sheridan, Feehan, David C. Glasser, David Oyelowo, Jessica Oyelowo, David Permut, Christina Alexandra Voros, Ron Burkle, Bob Yari, and David Hutkin. It is based on the life of the first African American Deputy U.S. Marshal west of the Mississippi River, Bass Reeves.
