Opening Shot: In Loxton, in the Karoo region of South Africa’s Northern Cape province, three motorcycles buzz down a dirt road just after the son goes down.

The Gist: The bikers stop at a local pub and harass the young bartender there. A seemingly quiet man named Lemmer (James Gracie) sees that and pounds the crap out of the bikers, and might have done worse if Diederik Brand (Deon Lotz) didn’t intervene. Diederik has a proposal for Lemmer; he needs someone with his experience to transport some not-so-legal cargo from the Zimbabwe border back to town. Lemmer seems resistant, but at a certain point, Deiderik knows he’ll agree to it.

Back in Cape Town, a woman named Milla Sachan (Rolanda Marais) packs her bags and heads for a new life. She’s left her powerful husband and wants to get a job so she can take care of her son, over whom her soon-to-be-ex wants full custody. Elsewhere, a shady deal goes down that’s been spied on by a guy named Ismail (Adrian Alper). He was about to surreptitiously video the proceedings when his phone rings (ever heard of vibrate, Ismail?), which sets off a lengthy chase over various rooftops. With a bullet in his leg and his options limited, he surrenders to the police. But one of them, Quinn Makebe (Thapelo Mokoena), picks him up and says, “What have you done now, Ismail?”

Ismail is an informant for Makebe, who works for the Presidential Bureau of Intelligence, who brings Ismail back to HQ to pump him for what he knows. After Makebe’s boss, Director Janina Mentz (Sandi Schultz), squeezes the informant’s bad leg to get him to talk. And what he reveals is that one of the meeting’s attendees is an al-Qaeda operative named Suleiman Daoud (Emmanuel Castis). Something big is being brought into the country, and the PBI is throwing all its resources at the urgent issue.

In the meantime, Milla tries to get a researcher job at a newspaper, but when she’s turned down, she’s encountered by one of the other recruiters, who also happens to work for the PBI. She says, “Can you keep a secret?” and recruits her to be a researcher at the bureau. She finds a key piece of info on her first day that leads the task force to focus on a new operative.

After Ismail gets his throat slashed and bleeds to death in broad daylight, an operation goes forward to place a camera in the home of one of the low-level operatives to see if Daoud does some further dealmaking. The operation to plant the camera is successful, but just barely. At the same time, Janina finds out that, based on an earlier botched investigation, the president is ready to shut down the PBI. When Makebe finds out about that, he wants to aggressively go after Daoud as a way to keep the bureau alive.

But when they go to capture Daoud, Janina aborts, thinking that it’s best that they find out more about the bigger operation so they can roll everyone up. Notes on the laptop in the video, though, show that the big target might be a friendly football match between the South African and USA national teams.

Meanwhile, Lemmer meets a chatty truck driver named Lourens (Gerald Steyn), who takes him to the rendezvous spot, where he meets an operative named van Jaarsveld (Trix Vivier); the three of them meet the people who want them to transport the contraband. It’s just a surprise when they find out what the contraband is.

Our Take: If the description above seems like a long, twisty tale, well, the first episode of the show, based on Deon Meyer’s novel Trackers, is just that. Lots of stories and people, seemingly has a number of somewhat unrelated threads that slowly start to come together by the first episode, but it’s not entirely clear where and when these threads are going to come together. As it is, it feels like your standard international spy thriller, with some other stuff mixed in.

When we get to the end of the first episode, we have Milla’s story, the PBI’s pursuit of Daoud, and Lemmer’s transport of the contraband into the heart of South Africa. The first and the third ones seem somewhat undercooked in the early going, and we’re not sure if we will have the patience of waiting for them to develop and connect into the bigger story. We already know that somehow Milla’s made her way into the PBI, but what her role will be going forward is anyone’s guess. Her crumbling personal life seems like it would be the better part of her story, but how it ties into the investigation is unknown right now.

Really, if the show just stuck to a spy/anti-terror/intrigue story involving the PBI, which was due to get shut down, it would have been a taut thriller. Can the agency bring down the big catch before they’re disbanded? That would have been all that was needed for a thrilling season.

Of course, if that was the case, we wouldn’t have seen the spectacular scenery shot around South Africa, especially in the savannas where Lemmer was making his way to get his cargo. So maybe we need the other threads. But right now there are too many stories and characters, and not enough time to give them all the proper storytelling space they need.

Sex and Skin: None

Parting Shot: We see the closeup of the contraband Lemmer and Flea are going to transport… a black rhino.

Sleeper Star: Avital Lvova plays researcher Jessica van Zandt, who is Milla’s boss, and she’ll have a bigger role in the investigations going forward, as will some of the other agents at the PBI.

Most Pilot-y Line: Some of the diversions thrown out by the PBI in their operation to install the camera were comical, including a car that blocked an intersection for an inordinately long time to keep the guy who lives in the home they were bugging away.

Our Call: STREAM IT. There’s enough action in Trackers to keep you interested. But the first episode is disjointed and confusing, and you may not have the patience to stay with the show as the stories start to come together.

https://decider.com/2020/06/05/trackers-cinemax-stream-it-or-skip-it/