‘Prime Target’ Is a Charming Popcorn Thriller

“Prime Target,” an eight-episode thriller premiering Wednesday on Apple TV+, has the juicy vibe of a novel you might pick up at an airport and rip through in a single flight. It has an outlandish premise, beautiful people, and it ends on a cliffhanger every episode.

After an opening scene in Baghdad, where a gas explosion unearths an ancient site, the series really gets underway at the University of Cambridge, in England. That’s where we meet Edward Brooks, a brilliant young mathematician played by Leo Woodall.

Despite good looks that would make him welcome at any college rager, Edward is a loner who spends his days scribbling in his notebook, hard at work on a theorem involving prime numbers. (He doesn’t use computers; what he’s doing is too advanced for those silly things.) When his professor (David Morrissey) gets wind of the puzzle Edward is trying to solve, he panics: Basically, it’s a formula to pick any digital lock anywhere. Oops.

Because of the volatility of his research, Edward ends up in the cross-hairs of the U.S. National Security Agency, which has been spying on high-level mathematicians in case they stumble across the next big weapon. Luckily for Edward, a rebellious agent named Taylah (Quintessa Swindell) becomes his ally.

“Prime Target” doesn’t try too hard to explain the equations Edward is doing, which is fine. It would go over my head anyway. Instead, we get a globe-trotting adventure in which Edward and Taylah are constantly on the run from people who want to kill them because of Edward’s math.

And ultimately realism isn’t the strong suit of “Prime Target.” Woodall became a television heartthrob playing charming cads in Season 2 of “The White Lotus” and in Netflix’s “One Day.” He isn’t the first person you think of to play a shy, conflict-avoidant mathematician. Still, he has a sheepish appeal that works well in this context. And Swindell, stomping around in leather jackets, baggy jeans and motorcycle boots, makes for a cool surveillance expert. Her tragic back story is vague, but her fashion sense is kicking.

All of this makes for a show about smart people that still allows you to turn down your brain and have a good time.