Quarantine and Chill Recommendation: Patriot on Prime Video
To know if the series Patriot is for you it is only necessary to commit to the pilot episode to find out exactly how it is that deadpan lead character John secures his cover job at the industrial piping firm. If you don’t laugh out loud, I’m sorry to have wasted your time and you can move on to another show that I almost certainly won’t like. If you’re at all like me, you’ll be hooked for the long haul and you get 2 seasons (18 episodes) of chill time to take your mind off the horrifying worldwide news.
The aforementioned piping job covers for the main character’s real identity as a secret government operative who also happens to compose and sing folk songs about the awful things that he does. It know it sounds like it could land on the precious side but trust me, the execution is anything but. The cast is uniformly outstanding, especially when talking technical industrial piping talk, which thankfully is not infrequent—”Let me walk you through our Donnelly nut-spacing and crack system rim-riding grip configuration.” I could listen to that piping stuff all day as it is always punctuated by John’s complete lack of giving a shit. And there’s the steady diet of comedic intrigue and mayhem of course.
Strangely, the pilot was released in 2015 with the rest of the first season to follow in 2017 after it caught on with viewers. Season 2 was released in late 2018 and continued to deliver on the promise of the first season albeit with a slightly darker tone to the quirky sense of humor. I’m thankful this highly original show somehow got made and look forward to more from show creator Steven Conrad who achieves a pitch perfect tone throughout as he somehow balances its dark subject matter with absurd humor.