Spoilers for Reacher Season 4 follow.

One criticism I keep seeing about Reacher is that it is formulaic, and that is fair. Reacher turns up somewhere new, realises something is wrong and gets involved with a group of strangers. Before long, he has uncovered something much bigger than anyone expected and has to deal with it through investigation, instinct and the fact that he is considerably larger than almost everyone else.

I don’t really see that formula as a weakness. For me, it is one of the reasons the show works.

The world changes even when Reacher doesn’t

Every season resets the board with a different place, mystery, police force, group of villains and set of relationships. Reacher is the constant, but the world around him changes.

That suits him far better than giving him a permanent office, a regular police department or the same people around him every year. He is a drifter. He walks into somebody else’s world, understands it remarkably quickly, breaks whatever system is causing the problem and then leaves.

Season 4 has been especially good at making the people in that world interesting. The dynamic between Reacher and the two police officers is one of the strongest parts of the season because they are competent enough to stand on their own and challenge him. Their conversations are much better than they would be if the officers simply followed Reacher around while he solved everything.

They understand the place; Reacher notices the things they have learnt to ignore. That balance works.

Lila is another highlight. She is attractive, charismatic, dangerous and increasingly unhinged, which makes her a good match for somebody as controlled as Reacher. The reveal surrounding her family also gives the season more to play with than a simple story about a good side and a bad side. The people who initially appear to need protecting are not necessarily who we thought they were.

The politician surprised me too. I expected the usual revelation that he was secretly corrupt or involved in everything, but instead he sacrifices himself to stop the bomber. That was much better than discovering yet another hidden villain.

Letting Reacher fight like Reacher

The series continues to understand Reacher’s physicality. Jack Reacher isn’t supposed to fight like a lightweight martial artist. He is enormous, and his size and strength should completely change the way he approaches a fight.

Season 4 gets that. He grabs people, pins them and uses walls, doorways or anything else in the environment. He can overpower somebody in a situation where a smaller person would have to depend on speed or technique.

The two-against-one blade fight was probably my favourite action sequence of the season. By that point, Reacher had had his hand nailed to a wall and then to the floor, giving him a genuine physical limitation. The fight felt desperate as a result. I still expected him to survive, but for once I wasn’t watching an apparently invincible character. I was watching somebody badly hurt, trying to use whatever advantages he had left.

That was far more interesting than simply watching him flatten everyone without difficulty.

The people who already know him

The one thing I still miss is the 110th. Season 2 had a completely different energy because those characters had known Reacher for years. They could challenge him and laugh at him. More importantly, they knew what he was like before he became the man who wandered from one place to another.

That shared history made him feel more human. Neagley works especially well because she seems to be one of the very few people Reacher will deliberately seek out. I would happily watch more of that group.

I also understand why they can’t become the permanent cast. Reacher has to keep moving. If the 110th were always there, the series would lose the feeling that he has stepped into a place and a set of relationships that existed before he arrived.

Why I keep coming back

A formula only becomes a problem when the details stop changing. Reacher keeps its familiar structure while changing the people, places, mysteries and relationships around it. To me, that makes it feel closer to an old detective series than a show simply repeating itself.

I know roughly what kind of story I am sitting down to watch. The enjoyment comes from finding out who Reacher will meet, what is wrong, who is lying and who might turn out to be better than expected. There is also the inevitable question of who will make the extremely poor decision to try fighting Jack Reacher.

As long as the show keeps changing the world around him, I am perfectly happy with the formula. Sometimes knowing what kind of story you are getting is exactly why you come back.