In hindsight, Tom Cruise as Reacher is just plain idiotic. In the books, so much of Reacher's demeanor and character stemmed from his size and military background. And unfortunately for Cruise, you simply can't teach 6'5" (although, in fairness to Tom, Ritchson isn't 6'5" either, more like 6'2" and change...but an elevator shoe insert can do a lot more with that than it can for Tom Cruise).
I don't know that I'd give the 1st season a 100% Rotten Tomatoes rating, but some of that has to do with the original storyline from the book, which is now over two decades old and had to be modernized to make it a contemporary setting. Some things just didn't translate perfectly. But I binge-watched the 8 episodes and will watch season 2 just as eagerly. The second book in the series is Die Trying; hope they decide to keep the order for season 2 and do that one.
I found a YouTube interview with Alan Ritchson (below) about the show that was pretty interesting. One thing we find right away is that Ritchson is a talker where Reacher is not. But some points important to me include that Ritchson hadn't seen the Tom Cruise movies and chose not to watch them, but he read all 24 Reacher books before starting to film the show. (Of note is that as of late 2020 there were 24 Reacher novels, but there are 26 now.) Also something I didn't know is Ritchson's background is somewhat similar to the character Reacher because he grew up in a military family (his father was an Air Force Chief Master Sergeant), but Alan himself was never in the service. He also talks about how he's proud that the fight sequences are "true to the books," and they seem mostly to be. Child wrote Reacher to be an up-close fighter that used elbows instead of fists.
Would have liked to see more proper and technical depiction of firearms (and even blades; in Killing Floor Child has Reacher pocket the murdered police chief Morrison's thin, double-edged switchblade as a weapon of choice; the switchblade as a preferred fighting knife
makes reappearances in other Reacher books, too), but I doubt we're going to see much because that wasn't one of Lee Child's strong suits, either. Overall, the Amazon series has an 8.3 out of 10 rating at IMDB; I'd give it a 9.
I didn't dislike the Tom Cruise Reacher movies, but I'd already read some of the books by Lee Child (as far as I know there are 26 of them, first one in 1997). Written in first-person, that first book includes the first description of Reacher we see: