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He was an Essex boy with an incestuous secret in The White Lotus. Then Leo Woodall was elevated to TV heartthrob status in weepy romance One Day — wherein he made like Paul Mescal in Normal People, broke all of our hearts, and catapulted himself to Netflix name status. His next move? More genre fare, but this time he's exchanging tissues for twists, star-crossed love for secret schemes, and kisses in the rain for … maths.
That's in Prime Target, a new eight-part conspiracy thriller coming to Apple TV+ with Woodall at the top of the casting sheet. It was created by Steve Thompson, who wrote the hotly-rated Sherlock second season finale “The Reichenbach Fall” – you know, the one that ended with the infamous cliffhanger that implied the eponymous super-detective met his death splattered on the sidewalk. (It went unresolved for, like, two years, much to the chagrin of us, Tumblr and everyone else who became Sherlock-pilled in the early 2010s.) Ridley Scott's Scott Free Productions part-produced Prime Target, providing a little Hollywood heft.
By the sounds of things, Woodall will play a numbers nerd who falls foul of the National Security Agency. Hey! It happens to the best of us. Here's everything we know about the upcoming series.
Woodall's set to go all Carol Vorderman in the show — well, aside from the global conspiracy of it all. He plays a brilliant maths graduate, Edward Brooks, who is “on the verge of a major breakthrough,” per Apple TV+'s official synopsis, to do with a pattern in prime numbers (hence the title) that will hand him the keys to “every computer in the world.”
What does that actually mean? Has he cracked all of our shoddy passwords? Hell if we know, but the stakes sound huge — and it's enough meddling with ones and zeros that this maverick math wiz finds himself in the crosshairs of both an “unseen enemy” and the NSA, embodied by an agent portrayed by Black Adam's Quintessa Swindell. “Together, they start to unravel the troubling conspiracy Edward is at the heart of,” the synopsis continues.
Their characters haven't been announced yet, but the show will also feature the likes of The Walking Dead's David Morrissey, Oscar-nominee Stephen Rea, and Emmy-winner Martha Plimpton. All in all, a winning equation on the chalkboard.
There isn't an official release date yet. But let's run the numbers: Prime Target was announced in February this year after reportedly shooting in the second half of 2023, so we'd bet on it being nigh-on finished and ready to stream. A year-end premiere for the Leo Woodall series adds up, then — but let's wait and see what Apple says.
