More people should be watching ‘Lioness’ on Paramount+
More people should be watching ‘Lioness’ on Paramount+
Zoe Saldaña leads one of Paramount+’s smartest thrillers, and it still feels weirdly overlooked.
Taylor Sheridan isn’t quite synonymous with Paramount+, but almost. He’s made a few thrillers people talk about all the time, like “Mayor of Kingstown” and he just dropped his biggest debut ever on Paramount+ with “The Madison.” But every once in a while, there’s a show that clearly connects, clearly works, and still somehow feels like it never fully got its due.
That’s exactly how I feel about “Lioness.” Another Sheridan show, this thing was never some tiny secret. People watched it, it hit, and it got renewed. But the conversation around it never really matched how good it actually is. If you’re looking for the best under-the-radar thriller TV show on Paramount+, “Lioness” is my pick.
Best under-the-radar thriller TV show on Paramount+
Why ‘Lioness’ is the most underrated thriller series on Paramount+
I love the spy genre, so “Lioness” was a pretty easy sell for me. CIA program, undercover mission, terror-finance target. Zoe Saldaña running point with Nicole Kidman and Morgan Freeman in the mix. You hear that setup and think, okay, cool, this is going to be a slick military thriller. And it is that. But what surprised me is how much more bruised and emotional it is than the marketing really let on. It’s not just about the mission — it’s about what doing work like this actually does to the people inside it.
What really makes the show work for me is the pressure. A lot of thrillers have action, but not all of them know how to build actual tension. “Lioness” does. Cruz (played by Laysla De Oliveira) going undercover is stressful on its own, but then the show keeps layering on more and more weight. Joe (Saldaña) is managing the mission while her personal life is falling apart. Cruz is getting pulled deeper into relationships she can’t afford to feel too much about.
And the performances are a huge part of why it lands. Saldaña is so good here because she never plays Joe like some invincible superhero boss. She’s capable, but she’s also tired, angry, stretched thin, and very clearly carrying way too much. Oliveira is really the emotional fuse of the whole thing, though. Cruz has to be tough, alert, terrified, convincing, and vulnerable basically all at once, and she pulls it off. That’s a hard role. And Nicole Kidman also does that thing she’s great at, where she barely has to raise her voice, and you still feel the power in the room shift. The whole cast makes the show feel lived in.
I also think part of why the show feels underrated is that people kind of decided what it was before really sitting with it. The marketing pushed the military angle, the authenticity angle, and the star angle. All of that makes sense. But the actual show is much messier than that in a good way. It’s got domestic drama in it, it’s got emotional fallout, it’s got long stretches where the suspense comes from conversation, discomfort, or someone trying to hold it together in a room. So if you came in expecting pure action or pure espionage plot, I could see how you might miss what it’s actually doing. It’s way more about slow corrosion than heroics.
And honestly, I personally find that shows on Paramount+ don’t often get the marketing they deserve. I know it’s not the biggest streamer (though it’s growing quickly), but the title shift from “Lioness” to “Special Ops: Lioness” and then back to “Lioness” is the kind of small branding mess that absolutely matters more than people think. It makes a show weirdly harder to talk about, harder to remember, and harder to turn into clean word of mouth. Meanwhile, the actual series just kept doing its job, pulling viewers, getting better, and proving it had way more staying power than some of the early discourse gave it credit for.
That’s really why I landed here with it. “Lioness” is not underrated because nobody watched it, but because it never became as big in the prestige-TV conversation as a show this effective probably should have. It has the stars, it has the tension, it has the action, and it comes from one of the most talented TV creators of his time in Sheridan. But more importantly, it has an emotional spine. It understands that the real suspense is not just whether the mission works — it’s what the mission costs. That’s the part that sticks with you. And that’s why, for me, it stands above the rest of Paramount+’s thriller lineup when we’re talking about the best show more people should be talking about.
Lioness
Cruz Manuelos, a rough-around-the-edges but passionate young Marine, is recruited to join the CIA’s Lioness Engagement Team to help bring down a terrorist organization from within. Joe, the station chief of the Lioness program, is tasked with training, managing and leading her female undercover operatives.
What is ‘Lioness’ about?
“Lioness” follows Joe, a CIA operative running the agency’s Lioness program, which recruits female operatives to get close to high-value targets who would otherwise be impossible to reach. The story really locks in when Cruz, a tough young Marine, gets pulled into the program and sent undercover into the orbit of a billionaire’s daughter with ties to terror finance. From there, the show becomes this really intense mix of infiltration thriller, military drama, and personal breakdown, because every step deeper into the mission puts more pressure on Cruz, more pressure on Joe, and more pressure on everyone trying to control the situation from above. It’s got action, sure, but the thing that makes it work is how much emotional fallout there is when all is said and done.
After you watch the first episode of ‘Lioness,’ let us know what you think in the comments below.
Other underappreciated thriller TV shows on Paramount+
If you’re into “Lioness” and want more underrated thrillers on Paramount+, there are a few good ones to line up next. Start with “Mayor of Kingstown,” which is less covert ops and more prison-town pressure cooker, but it has that same grim, high-stakes Sheridan energy where every decision comes with fallout.
Then check out “Rabbit Hole,” which lets Kiefer Sutherland go full paranoid-conspiracy mode in a twisty corporate espionage thriller that deserved way more attention than it got. And don’t skip “The Agency,” which is a little slicker and more polished on the surface, but still scratches that same itch if what you like is watching smart people navigate dangerous systems where nobody fully trusts anybody. If that’s your lane, all three are easy follow-ups.
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