The Biggest Difference Between Tracker and the Novel It’s Based On The action drama
Tracker stars Justin Hartley as Colter Shaw, a survivalist and tracker who has built a career helping law enforcement and private citizens find missing people in exchange for reward money. Tracker is based on the 2019 novel The Never Game, the first installment in the Colter Shaw book series, which currently includes four novels.
Tracker, the most-watched show of 2024 and set to begin its second season on CBS on October 27, 2024, has been compared to Prime Video’s hit action series Reacher. Like Reacher, Tracker is based on a popular book series that features a lone wolf protagonist who travels across the United States in a nomadic fashion. Like Reacher’s protagonist Jack Reacher, Shaw is surrounded by a small group of people he trusts.
Beyond the similarities between Reacher and Tracker, Hartley and Reacher star Alan Ritchson both play the superhero Aquaman on television. However, Reacher and Tracker differ in how closely each show adheres to its source material. While Reacher’s first season was a fairly faithful adaptation of Jack Reacher’s first novel, Killing Floor, Tracker’s first season theoretically strayed from the plot of The Never Game while still retaining the character’s attributes and personal history from the series.
Like Reacher, Tracker is driven by Hartley’s charismatic presence, who imbues Colter with a level of likability and warmth that makes Colter seem far more believable and sympathetic on the show than he does on the page.
In addition to the main character Colter Shaw, the first season of Tracker features several existing characters from the Colter Shaw series, including Colter’s mother, Mary Shaw, brother Russell, sister Dorian Shaw, as well as Colter’s married caretakers Teddi and Velma, and Colter’s father, Ashton Shaw, who teaches Colter and his siblings how to survive in the wilderness and beyond.
New characters introduced in Tracker are Bobby, Colter’s technical expert, and Reenie, a lawyer who assists Colter in dealing with various legal issues he encounters during his dangerous and unpredictable work. While new characters are introduced in each episode, in keeping with the show’s procedural format, Tracker, like the series, focuses on family, as Colter struggles to deal with his broken family dynamics and reconcile the painful memories of his unconventional childhood.
One of the biggest differences between Tracker and its source material is how the show leverages the charisma of series star Justin Hartley, who previously won over audiences with his emotional performance on the powerful drama This Is Us, and turns Colter into a much more expressive and comedic character than he was in the books, where Colter was portrayed as the very definition of the strong and silent type.
While Tracker has adopted many character elements from the Colter Shaw series, most of the plots of the early episodes are quite different from those of the books. In the pilot episode, Colter is tasked with finding a missing teenage boy, whom Colter eventually finds handcuffed to a van in the woods, while The Never Game, the novel on which Tracker is based, features three kidnapping victims, including a missing college student, an LGBT activist, and a pregnant woman.
One of the most recognizable episodes, in relation to the series, is the episode “Missoula”, in which Colter must infiltrate a deadly cult to find a missing man. The episode is similar to the second installment in the series, the 2020 novel The Goodbye Man, in which Colter’s pursuit of two armed fugitives in the wilderness of Washington State leads him to The Foundation, a cult run by a madman who demands terrible loyalty from his followers.
Despite its survivalist and wilderness values, Tracker follows all the conventions of the procedural genre, with Colter Shaw playing various roles as a good Samaritan, private investigator, and mercenary throughout the series.
In addition to the show’s contemporary presentation, many of the show’s episodes’ plots could be lifted from the plots of classic 1970s private detective shows like The Rockford Files. Like The Rockford Files, which is set in California but sees protagonist Jim Rockford travel across the United States throughout the series, Tracker follows Colter on different cases in different locations while surrounding him with a colorful cast of characters from all walks of life.
One of the aspects that
