• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, Yesterday

A team of gung-ho crimefighters, all geniuses and masters of their unique skill sets, are hand-picked for a new, classified task force assigned to prevent a catastrophic terrorist attack.

If this basic outline sounds familiar, then that is because it is familiar. This scenario is similar to a hundred other action shows seen on TV since at least September 11, 2001.

That is when the trend really began to snowball, leading up to the present day and this week’s premiere of another one -- “Countdown” on Amazon Prime.

Led by Eric Dane (above photo, front and center), the team members include “the renegade,” a swashbuckling police detective who plays by his own rules; the streetwise, “fierce” Latina who is good with her fists and, in one scene, a baseball bat; two computer whizzes, one male and one female; the tall, muscular African-American detective who keeps a cool head; and a Little League Baseball dad who moonlights as a secret agent.

The unit of elite computer hacking and gun-waving superstars is a common theme on TV, most notably on one CBS police procedural after another.

The thing is, it is doubtful that these kinds of elite units even exist in real life. And if they don’t, one wishes that they did because they are totally awesome! 

In Episode One previewed by the TV Blog, the team members are each yanked suddenly away from what they were doing -- including one of them who was spending a year in prison to infiltrate a gang -- and whisked off to an office in Los Angeles where Eric Dane makes a speech.

He tells them why they have been hand-picked and what the assignment of the new task force will be. He breaks up the meeting with an ASAP order for each of them to come up with a game plan in one hour.

As they crisscross the office to their new desks, the swaggering establishment of petty rivalries begins.

Behind the scenes, when no one else is looking, the team members are busy looking each other up on the internet.

This online research is so easy to do that it makes you wonder if anyone who made this show ever heard of cybersecurity.

This is the kind of show in which the team is seen in the office organizing their thoughts until one of them has a brainstorm, after which they all hurry out of the building and into their black SUVs in the assumption that every hunch, no matter how vague, will lead them straight to their targets.

Whether they succeed or fail does not matter. What matters is how much action they can put into their chases and gunfights. 

In one scene, one of the team members actually leaps onto a car hood and slides off the other side like he’s Starsky and Hutch.

By the end of Episode One, we learn what the team is really up against. And it is the biggest potential attack since “24.”

But that show’s 24 episodes every season were supposed to tell their stories in real, one-hour time (minus commercials). 

“Countdown” does “24” one better. It has only 13 episodes to thwart this attack. No wonder everyone is in such a doggone hurry. Get me that action plan, stat!

“Countdown” starts streaming on Wednesday (June 25) on Amazon Prime Video.