The Lost Symbol Reivew

“It’s a need to know world… they like their secrets,” the police say about the CIA as an investigation unfolds in the new Dan Brown thriller The Lost Symbol on the Peacock Network.

But the only secret worth pondering so far is how and why they couldn’t make this story more compelling.

The premise is simple but the plot is fairly convoluted.

Robert Langdon (Ashley Zukerman, Succession) is a Harvard professor whose specialty involves studying ancient symbols and iconography. After getting a phone call from his mentor Peter Solomon (Eddie Izzard) inviting him to the U.S. Capitol Building to be a last minute key-note speaker, he heads there only to find Solomon’s severed hand and several cryptic clues. A phone call from the kidnapper Mal’akh (Beau Knapp) warns Solomon’s life is in Langdon’s hands but he has to help solve a puzzle first.

The purpose of all these puzzles is to reach some other state of existence or being-ness or after life-ness or who knows what. It’s not clear if anyone believes this is possible, and Langdon seems to have his doubts, but it’s clear Mal’akh has some convinced that this different realm is possible and it’s worth other people dying for it. Yes, there are nine more episodes to discover exactly what this mystery is and why the antagonist needs this special power, but it would have been awfully nice to explain or tease some of this out in the pilot. Use a dream sequence or channel what Evil does so well and show how the supernatural and scientific realm can each explain something, for example.

I will be honest: I’m not a huge Dan Brown fan and haven’t read this book. But, I can stomach similar stories when they are found in films like National Treasure – because of goofy Nicolas Cage and campy action.

Still, maybe there’s a reason National Treasure is a film and not a TV series.

This played out like a series of staccato facts and mini-puzzles that seem destined to go on forever. Watching The Lost Symbol is a lot like being locked with your colleagues in a “panic room” where you need to solve things in rapid succession and half the time you wish desperately to simply be away from those you’re locked in with, even if it means not solving the darn puzzle.

The actors are tasked with leading us out of this rather repetitive game of clue hunting, and they are, so far, limited by a script that fails to make them interesting.

And while there’s a kidnapping as the key motivation to “solve” the puzzle, I don’t sense an imminent doom and I don’t really even care if the victim lives or dies. Much like a Sherlock Holmes story, the true joy is probably supposed to be in watching the protagonist solve these puzzles. But Holmes is wittier. Langdon is a mix of know-it-all and loner here and it’s not nearly appealing enough.

The lead CIA agent, Inoue Sato (Sumalee Montano) will hopefully become more interesting in future episodes. The plot thus far provides us with no compelling reason to like her or trust her, largely because most of the pilot is concentrated on our protagonists trying to solve clues together. It’s not clear, of course, why this case is so important to the CIA, and we assume that this information will be unraveled throughout the ten episodes. I hope for the show’s sake they can make Agent Sato a layered, complex character. But there’s little evidence of that so far.

A likeable Washington D.C. Capitol Building Security Guard, Alfonso Nunez (Rick Gonzalez) may have the most charisma on screen but it’s unclear how much we’ll see of him in subsequent episodes.

Still, the only backstory we get is Langdon’s, including that he had a previous relationship with Peter’s daughter, Katherine. Katherine is played by Valorie Curry, who presumably will team up with Langdon in this quest. We get a few flashbacks to set this up, but they don’t cover much.

Strangely, the first scene of the episode may have been the best: Langdon warned about the dangers and misconceptions of symbols. How many people use symbols for their own devious purposes to the point we have to wonder, “When do benign symbols become malignant? What is relevant then is relevant now….People can promote myths as fact.”

Making the book more political in order to prove this point would be fantastic. Instead, we’re left with a kooky plot that chooses to let us believe there are things like booby-trapped sub-basements in the Smithsonian, like some Egyptian tomb  booby-trap you’d find in an Indiana Jones movie, and they will close in on you if you aren’t careful. Again, it’s probably the fault of the source material but it just seems silly.

So we’re left with what purports to be a smart man’s Indiana Jones but alas, we have a character that is far less appealing. And without an interesting backstory or even a sense of real purpose from the villain, so far The Lost Symbol is a lost opportunity.

The Lost Symbol drops a new episode every Thursday on Peacock. You can stream it online at: https://www.peacocktv.com/watch/asset/tv/dan-browns-the-lost-symbol/5952493920723809112