Hunters (Amazon Prime) opens with a scene of cartoonish violence that catches the viewer off-guard. The camera descends from above onto the garden of a large house in rural Maryland in 1977, where elderly patriarch Biff Simpson (Dylan Baker) is hosting a barbecue. He has a margarita and an apron that says “kiss the cook”. His children are playing in the pool, and the lawn is scattered with brightly coloured inflatables. Biff’s junior colleague Hirsch (Stephen Pilkington) arrives with his wife Helen (Izabella Miko) ready to talk shop. When Helen sees Biff’s face she freezes, drops her pie, and starts screaming that he is the “butcher”, a Nazi who killed her family. Biff pleads innocence at first, then calmly reaches under his grill for a pistol. He shoots his wife and three children, two other guests and Hirsch. Before he completes the massacre, he explains to Helen that she was right, he is a Nazi, one of many living in America, preparing to rise up and create a new reich.

The rest of the first episode takes place mainly in Brooklyn of the same year, where wide-eyed Jewish tearaway Jonah (Logan Lerman) watches his grandmother be murdered by an unknown assailant. At the wake he meets Meyer Offerman (Al Pacino), who begins to induct him into a mysterious group of Nazi hunters, who are seeking revenge on their wartime assailants in the most direct and grizly ways they can imagine. Almost any means will suffice, when the aim is dead Nazis. Over the course of the first series, various German emigres are bumped off in a variety of grizzly ways. An old woman in Florida is gassed naked in the shower. A toyshop owner is stabbed in the eye. A Wagner-obsessed camp guard is played music until his ears bleed. The Nazi hunters are also being counter-hunted by the Nazi elements, especially a young psychopath called Travis (Greg Austin), while an FBI agent Morris (Jerrika Hinton) is on the tail of both groups.

TV shows that should have stopped after one season Show all 9 1 /9 TV shows that should have stopped after one season TV shows that should have stopped after one season Big Little Lies Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman, Laura Dern, Zoë Kravitz and Shailene Woodley combine to form TV gold in Big Little Lies. But the second season, despite the welcome addition of Meryl Streep to the cast, failed to recapture the allure of season one. Originally, the series was based on Liane Moriarty's 2014 novel of the same name – and perhaps it should have ended where the book did. Hulu TV shows that should have stopped after one season The Magicians The first season of The Magicians was intriguing, whimsical, touching and deliberately kitschy all at the same time. While it's always nice to revisit the magical world of Fillory, the show's subsequent seasons never rose to the level of its initial installment. Netflix TV shows that should have stopped after one season Stranger Things This writer disagrees, but Stranger Things was a popular pick in a recent Twitter discussion about TV shows that should have wrapped up after one season. It can be argued that seasons two and three didn't quite measure up to the excitement of the first one – though without them, fans would never have got to witness Steve Harrington's transformation from annoying jock to amazing babysitter to our younger heroes. Something to ponder. Netflix TV shows that should have stopped after one season 13 Reasons Why Regardless of whether you liked or disliked the premise of 13 Reasons Why, from a purely televisual standpoint, the first season was good – suspenseful, at times touching, and landing some strong sequences. It all unravelled with the lacklustre second and third seasons. Like Big Little Lies, 13 Reasons Why was based on a book (this one by Jay Asher) and should probably have stuck to the material it provided. Netflix TV shows that should have stopped after one season True Detective Not to take away from Mahershala Ali's performance in season three – but True Detective's second and third seasons didn't prove as entertaining as the first one, starring Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson. Hulu TV shows that should have stopped after one season Prison Break Prison Break had a simple concept: Michael Scofield (Wentworth Miller) gets incarcerated on purpose because he has a master plan to escape along with his brother, who's been wrongfully convicted. And sure enough, the two escape at the end of season one along with six other inmates. This seemed like a natural conclusion for the show, but it continued for four more seasons. Hulu TV shows that should have stopped after one season Westworld Westworld season one was clever, beautifully shot, and achingly suspenseful. After that things just got... complicated. Hulu TV shows that should have stopped after one season Bloodline Bloodline was a critics darling as a result of its first season, but seasons two and three only attracted mixed reviews. The show, led by Kyle Chandler, Ben Mendelsohn, Linda Cardellini and Norbert Leo Butz, concluded in 2017. Netflix TV shows that should have stopped after one season Heroes Heroes was the talk of the town at the time of its premiere in 2006. After an acclaimed first season, the second installment wasn't as well received – and seasons three and four experienced a similar fate. NBC

The stylish direction, meticulous period detail, throwaway humour and abrupt mass-murder are pure Quentin Tarantino. His film about Nazi hunting, Inglourious Basterds, is an obvious reference for the Hunters writers and producers, led by Get Out’s Jordan Peele. By way of justification for the violence, flashbacks return us to the camp at Auschwitz, where we witness the terrors of the Holocaust. They are gruesome but curiously sanitised, too: we see the death and defiance but little of the aftermath. Everyone dies before we’ve grown attached.

The Hunters, too, are such thin caricatures that the rag-tag misfits in X-Men or Ocean’s 11 appear practically Dostoyevskian by comparison. Some serious wedge has been splurged. The street scenes ooze research and prop budgets. At the heart of it all is Pacino, coaxed into his first major TV appearance. He could do this stuff in his sleep, but he shows up nonetheless. His Meyer is a grizzled old millionaire, sustained by an simmering quiet fury. For him there is no question that the Nazis deserve direct revenge. It’s to the cast’s credit that they don’t labour too much in his shadow, especially Austin, previously known for roles in Mr Selfridge and the Doctor Who spin-off Class, as the villainous Travis.