If you enjoy your thrillers with big bangs, shady conspiracies and a revolving door of unhinged villains, then ‘The Hunting Party‘ could be your new guilty pleasure when it lands on U&Alibi this October.
The series doesn’t ease you in gently. It opens with a colossal explosion at The Pit, a top-secret underground prison built to house the most dangerous criminals in America. The kind of people so dangerous the government doesn’t even admit they exist. When the smoke clears, several prisoners are unaccounted for, including notorious serial killer Richard Harris. Cue panic in Washington and the frantic assembly of a hush-hush task force to sweep it all back under the rug.
Fronting the team is former FBI profiler Bex Henderson, played by Melissa Roxburgh (Manifest). Roxburgh’s character isn’t exactly thrilled to be dragged back into the field, but she quickly finds herself knee-deep in killers, cover-ups and questions about who she can actually trust. She’s joined by CIA agent Ryan Hassani (Patrick Sabongui, The Flash), ex-Pit guard Shane Florence (Josh McKenzie, La Brea), Army intelligence officer Jennifer Morales (Sara Garcia, Ride), and Oliver Odell, the prison’s ex-warden, played by Nick Wechsler (Revenge). It’s a line-up that feels like someone smashed together characters from three different spy dramas, but that’s part of the fun! Every member has their own baggage, and half the time, you’re not sure if they’re helping or hiding something.
Now here’s the spicy bit. The Hunting Party has one of the wildest critic-to-fan score gaps in recent memory. Rotten Tomatoes critics have buried it with a 25% Tomatometer score. Brutal. And yet the audience score is a whopping 83%. That’s not just a gap… that’s a canyon. It tells you everything about what kind of show this is. The critics see clichés and over-the-top plotting. The fans? They see glossy pulp, ridiculous fun and a cast they already love from their favourite sci-fi oddities.
And honestly, the fans might be onto something. Think ‘The Blacklist’ meets ‘Blindspot’ but with serial killers, and some ‘Manifest’ sprinkled on top. The first three episodes are apparently a bit of a slog, but episode four is where it kicks into high gear. That’s when the escaped killers get creepier, the conspiracies get twistier, and the speculation really starts. Was the explosion an accident or an inside job? Were secret experiments going on at The Pit? It’s the kind of show designed to get people spinning wild theories at 2am.
NBC clearly thinks there’s enough juice in the concept, because they’ve already renewed it for a second season. That means whatever bonkers reveals they’re cooking up, there’ll be more on the way. And it makes sense. Melissa Roxburgh already proved with Manifest that she can anchor a conspiracy-heavy genre show, while Josh McKenzie brought the “is he evil or not” energy to La Brea. Put them together in a series about escaped serial killers, and you’ve got exactly the sort of chaotic cocktail that mainstream critics love to sneer at while audiences secretly binge the lot.
So, is The Hunting Party prestige TV? No. Is it smart, slick, ridiculous fun with a ton of potential to spiral into glorious nonsense? Absolutely. Think of it as the TV equivalent of that dodgy takeaway you order at midnight. You know it’s not Michelin-starred, but you also know you’re going to enjoy every bite.
‘The Hunting Party‘ Season 1 premieres Thursday, 22nd October 2025 at 9pm on U&Alibi, with episodes available on demand via Sky, Virgin Media and NOW.
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