Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol’ On Peacock, Where A Young Robert Langdon Tries To Save His Mentor By Finding A Portal In D.C.

Dan Brown’s novels, especially those involving symbologist Robert Langdon, are pulpy action thrillers that are designed to take you on a ride with Langdon and whoever his companion is, rather than make you consider and think. Dan Brown’s The Last Symbol, based on his 2009 novel, does the same, except Langdon is much younger than the version Tom Hanks played in The Da Vinci Code and other films based on Brown’s novels. Read on for more.

DAN BROWN’S THE LOST SYMBOL: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A dreary video of birds flying in a cloud-like formation. Then there’s an explanation of a document locked in the CIA director’s office that speaks of a secret portal.

The Gist: “Agri, Turkey, Three Years Ago.” A prisoner is dragged into the courtyard, and guards slash off the tips of his toes. Meanwhile, another prisoner sits in the middle of a symbol in his cell, praying.

“Harvard University, now.” Robert Langdon (Ashley Zukerman), a professor in symbology, is called away from class by his mentor, Peter Solomon (Eddie Izzard). It’s actually someone claiming to be his assistant; Solomon wants Langdon to fill in for a last-minute cancellation at a conference in the Capitol building. He goes immediately, and when he arrives in Washington, he calls Peter’s daughter Katherine (Valorie Curry) to see if they can have dinner.

But when he gets there, he sees that there is no conference. A call tells him that he followed instructions well. But right as he wonders just what is going on, a scream comes from the other side of the rotunda; a hand is found on a pedestal. It’s pointing up, and has a ring on it that’s very familiar to Langdon. Also, the fingers have symbols tattooed on them; this when he knows that the hand belongs to Solomon.

A Capitol Police officer named Nunez (Rick Gonzalez) tells Langdon that he saw a man with heavy makeup on and his arm in a cast; the fingers on the hand had tats. This dude is likely the guy who is also calling Langdon from Solomon’s phone. Soon joining the investigation is a CIA agent, Inoue Sato (Sumalee Montano). Why the CIA? As we find out later, it has something to do with the death of Solomon’s son Zach (Keenan Jolliff) in Turkey.

As Langdon follows the symbols and puts together the clues, he leads Nunez and Sato to a sub-basement of the Capitol, where Solomon did some of his more intense studies, in the presence of a bible and human remains. As they press, the walls start to close in, but they find a small pyramid with symbols on it and get it out just in time. As Sato pursues where the phone calls are coming from, though, a gunman shoots the agent guarding Langdon and Nunez, and orders Langdon to go out and find the capstone; this will unlock the portal under D.C. and also keep Solomon from being killed.

Langdon dashes out, but Katherine catches up to him; she demands to go and holds an envelope that her father kept in a safe and wanted given to the authorities if anything happened to him.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The Da Vinci Code, of course, but here Langdon is 20 years younger (despite the time period being the present).

Our Take: Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol, based on the author’s 2009 novel, is pretty much what you’d expect: Robert Langdon and a female partner figuring out what symbols and other rituals mean as they press towards solving a problem, always facing peril at every turn. There really is no deeper plot than that, even if we hear a little bit about why Langdon became so close to Solomon and his family, given that he really didn’t have any of his own.

We see that in flashbacks where we also get to witness some of Solomon’s eccentricities, which are played with Izzard’s usual panache. We also get to see the back history between Langdon and Katherine, which was more romantic than we first realized. So the first episode sets up an adventure where Langdon’s motivation is saving a father figure in his life, while getting closer to Katherine as she helps him chase all the clues down.

Zukerman is no Tom Hanks, but he’s sufficiently charming as Langdon to make us believe he’s the young version of Brown’s signature character. Dan Dworkin and Jay Beattie, who adapted the novel for TV, have been given sufficient budget by Imagine and CBS Studios to make a show with decent effects and credible acting, which is helpful when watching a grand adventure series on a streaming channel. Will the scope be as wide as a film version might? Likely not, as it seems that the adventure will stay within the confines of D.C. But at least the scenes where Langdon and whoever he’s with are in peril actually look perilous.

We just wonder if there’s enough story to propel this through ten episodes. Brown’s story is likely meaty enough to carry things, but how many times will we see Langdon cheat death and decode a symbol or painting on the first try in order to keep the story going, and will we get sick of it? The more we buy into Langdon’s prolific skills and the more twisty the story is, the better. But we’re not sure if Dworkin, Beattie and their writers will be able to pull it off.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: The man who put Solomon’s hand in the Capital, Mal’akh (Beau Knapp) is now seen bald and covered in tattoos; he goes to the now-one-handed Solomon, whom he has captive, and tells him that he was the one who killed Zach.

Sleeper Star: Valorie Curry seems to be a good match for Zukerman; we just hope to see some chemistry develop between them.

Most Pilot-y Line: When CIA agents catch Katherine inside Solomon’s house, the ask her for ID. She says, “How’s that?” and points to a pick of her and her dad at her graduation. You’d think the agent would have seen a picture of her somewhere, no?

Our Call: STREAM IT. There’s nothing glaringly bad about Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol. It certainly seems like it’ll have a lot of action and adventure and not burden the audience with a ton of backstory. We just hope the show doesn’t get repetitive.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

Stream Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol On Peacock