TV Talk: ‘Lioness’ fills the ‘SEAL Team’ void on Paramount+

Trib Total Media TV writer Rob Owen offers a viewing tip for the coming week.

As it looks like we’re in for a long haul with the writers’ and actors’ strikes, fans of Paramount+ series “SEAL Team” will be waiting a while to see that show’s seventh season — writing wasn’t complete before the writers’ strike began in May.

However, the new Paramount+ series “Special Ops: Lioness,” streaming July 23, offers an adequate substitute.

Created by Taylor Sheridan, impresario of “Yellowstone,” “1923” and filmed-in-Pittsburgh “Mayor of Kingstown,” “Lioness” features an opening credits sequence with visuals and music reminiscent of “Kingstown,” but the plot, at least in the first and only episode made available for review, is more streamlined, less convoluted.

The show focuses on Joe (Zoe Saldana) as she balances her personal and professional life. At home, she has a husband (Dave Annable) and two children, but her thoughts are mostly consumed with work on the CIA’s Lioness Program where Joe oversees a Marine, Cruz (Laysla De Oliveria), who goes undercover to get close to a target responsible for state-sponsored terrorism in the Middle East.

Nicole Kidman appears in a supporting role as Joe’s boss, Kaitlyn Meade, who runs the Lioness Program with Donald Westfield (Michael Kelly, “House of Cards”).

With just one episode to judge the show on — although two episodes will debut Sunday — it’s unclear exactly what the series will be like episode-to-episode, but it seems like it will be heavily serialized as it tracks Cruz’s first undercover mission.

The premiere episode begins with an operation that goes sideways and then flashes back to establish Cruz as a victim of domestic violence (shades of the Native American woman’s storyline in Sheridan’s “1923”), who, while escaping from an abusive boyfriend, just happens to run into a U.S. Marine recruiting office seeking help.

Unlike “1923,” which moseyed at a glacial pace, director John Hillcoat keeps “Lioness” moving apace. It also helped that the first episode is a brisk 41 minutes, avoiding the bloat that mars too many streaming dramas these days.