Ransom is an internationally co-produced television drama series that first premiered on January 1, 2017. The series is a collaboration between CBS (U.S), Global (Canada), TF1 (France) and RTL (Germany). The show stars Luke Roberts, Nazneen Contractor, Brandon Jay McLaren and Sarah Greene. The show was to be cancelled after its first season due to mediocre ratings and both CBS and RTL withdrawing their support for the show. Global and TF1 managed to rescue the show from cancellation, and CBS eventually changed its mind.
Crisis Resolutions is a private security company in the US that hires its services to individuals and governments who can afford to pay for their services when things with law enforcement go sideways with no resolution in sight. Eric Beaumont is an expert hostage negotiator who has been in the field for years after he left the FBI. He helps resolve situations by negotiating with criminals and terrorists in kidnapping cases that usually involve ransom. He's assisted by Oliver Yates, a psychologist and by Zara Hallam, an ex-police officer and mother of two children.
In the middle of a hostage situation in Montreal, prospective hire Maxine Carlson masquerades as a CR employee to help Eric resolve the hostage crisis. However, Oliver refuses to accept her into the company for she and Eric share a tragic past...
Head here for the character page.
The show has ended after three seasons.
The show provides the following tropes:
- Actor Allusion: This isn't the first police-related series that Brandon Jay McLaren has appeared in. The same goes with Nazneen Contractor.
- Conspiracy Theorist: CR investigate a case of poisoned insulin in "Dark Triad" where a conspiracy theorist is the main suspect.
- Death Faked for You: CR arranges for Taylor's family to leave Quebec since even after Frances is arrested by the SQ, her men unleashed a car bomb attack. With this, it gave the family opportunity to leave since Frances would know that they've been seriously injured or killed in "The Client".
- Dirty Cop: One of the suspects in "The Box" was a corrupt cop accused of shooting a teenager. He's not and his superior is the one who did it and he was told to be the fall guy. He didn't like it so much that he robbed the bank to get to his safety deposit box.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: "Black Dolphin" highly resembles the Momo challenge to a coincidence when it's revealed that it's an online game that among all things, gets players to kill themselves.
- Friendly Sniper: The GTI sniper who helps Eric resolve the situation by shooting at the last minute when Eric makes Bernard kneel, appealing to his dedication to God.
- Gambit Pileup: Some episode storylines center on this, usually centering on two story arcs that seem to be unrelated at first, but are answered in the episode later or in another episode or so.
- An example of a complicated pileup is "Secrets and Spies" when the NOC list is loose somewhere in downtown Vienna. Turns out that a CIA officer stationed in Vienna was forced to release it thanks to a honey trap plan. A woman on vacation with her family takes advantage of it and goes undercover to stop someone from selling it to foreign intelligence agencies. CR gets called in by the woman's husband after she goes missing and they investigate anyone connected to her, including her MI6 ally and the CIA officer to learn that the latter is the one responsible and the woman's kidnapper is demanding the antidote or else she'll die.
- Loony Fan: The team suspects that an obsessive baseball player's fan is responsible for holding back a potential bone marrow transfer in "Grand Slam". Turns out that said fan is threatened by desperate parents to get money for their sick son or her sister will die.
- One-Word Title:
- The show: Ransom negotiations are the focus of the series.
- Episodes:
- Regeneration
- Ransom Drop: The CR team uses this as a means of making contact with the bad guys responsible for kidnapping people their clients know about. These exchanges sometimes involve improvising to make things easier such as making Niko turn on his brother Yannis by appealing to his hatred for being beaten up.
- The Starscream: Erik realizes that the leader of the hostage takers is a fanatic who cannot be negotiated with in "Regeneration". Erik and his team manipulate the situation so the much more reasonable second-in-command realizes how looney the leader has become and takes over.
- Serial Killer: "Fawn" has the CR team deal with a serial killer and his biological son after he finds out about his father's past.
- SWAT Team: In "The Return", the SPVM (Montreal Police Service) deploys the GTI (Tactical Intervention Group) during a hostage crisis in Montreal. They later assist CR in other episodes set in the GMA.
- In "The Box", the NYPD deploys the ESU to a hostage situation.
- In "Undercover", the Der Polizeipräsident in Berlin's SEK is deployed to hunt down an extreme Ukrainian nationalist trying to assassinate Russian in the downtown area.
- In "The Client, the SQ's GTI is deployed to capture Boston-based mobsters and recover ransom money.
- The Dog Was the Mastermind:
- In "Hardline, Tess, the nurse who helped Abby before she was taken prisoner was a victim of a hijacking by Somali pirates when her parents were killed due to refusal to pay a ransom.
- In "Radio Silence", the main culprit is the co-pilot of an airline who hijacked a flight from Chicago to Vancouver.
- Title Drop:
- "Stay of Execution": The CR team races against time to save a man wrongfully convicted of killing a man in 2009 and the man's wife wanted a stay of execution just to get the right evidence.
- "Dark Triad": The CR team goes to investigate a suspect who happens to be a narcissistic person. The article also portrays the term correctly
.
- Western Terrorists: The team deals with a teenager who was arrested by the FBI of trying to instigate a bombing attack for a pro-White terrorist group in "The Enemy Within". Turns out that part of it is done due to payback to her adopted father, who didn't give his attention to her when she was little. Also, her father was African-American.
- Eco-terrorists have seized hostages in Ottawa in "Regeneration".
