The Hunting Party, on NBC

How frequently does the Joker break out of Arkham? How many times did Stallone wriggle out of super-prisons in the Escape Plan movies? In that case, three times. The point is putting all the worst eggs in a fancy basket never seems to work, but they did so anyway in this new series. Hidden under the plains of Wyoming, “The Pit” secretly housed some of the nation’s worst serial killers, including several that were supposedly executed. They were the guinea pigs for some weird government research, because they wouldn’t be missed, until there was a massive escape. Semi-disgraced FBI Special Agent Rebecca “Bex” Henderson and her team scramble to capture the fugitives, while cautiously investigating the shadowy conspiracy that apparently facilitated their escape in creator JJ Bailey’s The Hunting Party, which starts its regular first season run this Monday on NBC.

The Pit was totally off the books and undisclosed to the public. Then a supposedly freak, but actually deliberately planned explosion rocked the facility. Given the destruction, it is not clear how many inmates escaped. It will probably depend on how long the series runs. One of the worst was Richard Harris, who happened to be the first case Henderson worked. Given her insight, Attorney General Elziabeth Mallory reactivates Henderson to track down Harris, teaming her up with Ryan Hassani, a CIA officer, whose agency has absolutely no domestic jurisdiction, and Shane Florence, a former correctional officer at the Pit, who manages to invite himself along.

Richard Harris? Seriously, JJ Bailey? I’m not a profiler, but I would suggest looking for Harris in MacArthur Park. After all, there have been reported sightings of cakes mysteriously left out in the rain.

Despite the presumably accidental disrespect to King Arthur and Dumbledore, the first four episodes already show some decent chemistry between the three lead “hunters” and Oliver Odell, a former FBI agent who served as the warden of the Pit and clearly seems to know more about the escape than he wants to admit. However, the trust-and-suspicion dynamics Henderson has with him and her natural agency rival Hassani, elevate the energy of the fairly routine fugitive chase stories.

Harris and the second episode psycho, Clayton Jessup, are quite familiar in their motives and methods. However, “Lowe,” from the like-titled third episode, has the unusual distinction of being a human-hating environmental extremist, whose M.O. involved feeding victims to a wolfpack. Perhaps episode four’s Dr. Ezekiel Malak is the creepiest, especially considering his new extreme method of killing, which is definitely a fresh and horrifying wrinkle.

Melissa Roxburgh is a strong lead. She has credibility in both the deductive and action-oriented scenes and develops nice chemistry with her co-stars. Nick Wechler is appropriately shifty as Odell, generating potentially spoilery tension with Roxburgh.

Patrick Sabongui’s portrayal of Hassani, the politically astute family man wears well over the course of the early episodes, but in real-life, any AG would raise Holy Heck if a CIA officer had any involvement whatsoever in domestic manhunts. Josh McKenzie is also so likably grounded as Florence, his character must have some deep dark secret. However, Zabryna Guevara is too blandly bureaucratic as the obviously fishy Mallory.

So far, the individual captures have proceeded mostly by the numbers, but the larger deep state conspiracy shows promising signs. Arguably, a few more episodes would have really helped to give a clearer sense of how successfully Bailey and co-showrunner Jake Coburn build-up the season-length mystery.

Regardless, Roxburgh, Sabongui, and Wechler hold viewer attention to a somewhat greater extent than several long-running network procedural franchises. It a reasonable diverting safe harbor, while waiting for the nightly news. Recommended accordingly, The Hunting Party starts airing in its regular time-slot this Monday (2/3), with “Richard Harris” (which had a surprise sneak peak after last week’s playoff game) on NBC (and streaming the next day on Peacock).