Netflix has landed another licensed series that has debuted high on its top 10 chart already, as viewers are already flocking to it. It’s behind only the mega-popular Katt Williams comedy special and the new, inescapable season of Love is Blind.
The series is The Hunting Party, which originally aired on NBC. It’s airing season 2 now, but Netflix has landed season 1 a year after it first aired as a result of some sort of time-based unlock deal. So, is The Hunting Party worth watching? Does it deserve to be this high on Netflix’s top 10 list? Well, it’s complicated.
I was a bit confused about all this at first, as I thought this was perhaps another season of The Hunting Wives, the popular Malin Akerman, Brittany Snow series that aired in July 2025, which is supposed to air season 2 this year or next. It is not that, rather, here’s the synopsis of The Hunting Party:
“After a secret prison hidden underneath the Wyoming countryside suffers an unexpected explosion, the nation’s worst serial killers are once again at large; former FBI profiler Bex is brought back into the fold alongside an elite team of soldiers, spies and special agents to help track down and recapture these deadly criminals before they kill again; thrust into a world of intrigue and conspiracy, Bex must grapple with not only her own complex past, but also the enduring mystery of what was happening at this prison and who caused the explosion in the first place.”
On first glance, I also thought that this show starred Mission Impossible/The Fantastic Four’s Vanessa Kirby, but her lookalike is actually Melissa Roxburgh, whom I am unfamiliar with and apparently got her start in Diary of a Wimpy Kid. She was also in 62 episodes of Manifest, the show that was so popular on Netflix for so long it actually got another season after being cancelled.
Whether it’s worth watching may come down to which you trust more: critics or audiences, as there is a huge disparity between them. Season 1’s Rotten Tomatoes critic score is an 18%, while its audience score swings heavily in the other direction at an 82%. Here’s a sampling of the gap:
- AV Club: “The premise of The Hunting Party—searching for serial killers whose ill-advised treatments have rendered them even more vicious—is intriguing in theory, but the writers have somehow chosen the dullest possible execution of that vision.”
- Audience Review: “It’s a good watch. So of course critics hate it. They also hated the show Alcatraz. Hunting Party is Alcatraz meets the Blacklist. There’s nothing realistic about it but not like every show has to be realistic. This is fun.”
- Decider: “The Hunting Party is a generic action series that seems to operate on twists that either aren’t that surprising or are pretty much useless.”
- Audience Review: “This show scratches an itch that I’ve been missing for years. You can only binge-watch old episodes of Criminal Minds and Bones so many times before you just NEED something new but also the same. There’s nothing particularly innovative about the premise. But why mess with a good formula?”
The idea here is that audiences are missing competent procedural crime dramas as of late, but that may not appeal to high-brow critics, which explains the huge gap. So, do you like Criminal Minds and Bones, as viewers say? Or are you looking for a deeper, linear mystery that isn’t just week-to-week? That may be your deciding factor.
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