Ten Minutes With “Hunters.”

Algorithms are, in general, pretty sinister. They say that within a hundred “Likes” on Facebook, the computer models tracking your clicks will know you better than you know yourself.

Perhaps the most disturbing example that I’ve come across is that your phone might not be listening to you. There are plenty of stories of people saying something in conversation with a friend and then having the subject matter crop up in an online ad later that day, which logically implies that their phones have been eavesdropping. The scarier idea is that, in fact, the algorithms at Facebook, Google et al know what you’re likely to bring up in conversation with a friend, and when, and have already scheduled the ad.

Then again, algorithm predictions have been pretty hit-and-miss for me. A while back I was shopping online for a new watch, and ever since then I’ve been plagued by ads for watches that cost ten or twelve grand. Any algorithm (or person) who thinks I have twelve grand to blow on a timepiece clearly doesn’t know me at all.

All of which leads us to “Hunters,” the new Al-Pacino-hunts-Nazis series that Amazon seems convinced that I’m going to like. It’s being advertised to me everywhere.

On the face of it, it’s a solid bet. I fully support violence towards Nazis. I come from a proud family tradition of dropping bombs on them and…