Call of Duty Captain Price fans need to stream this forgotten Hulu show

As the wait for Season 4 of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare goes on, fans could pass the time checking off leftover challenges. Or, they could take a break from getting kill streaks and pick up a new show on Hulu, one that happens to star a very, very familiar face to Modern Warfare fans.

For fans of the badass Captain Price, who drops into Modern Warfare Season 4 as a playable Operator, the History Channel series Six, now streaming on Hulu, stars Price's actor Barry Sloane in the role of a U.S. Navy SEAL. While the plot of the series isn't exactly like any one specific game in the Call of Duty series, this binge makes an excellent compliment to those long Double XP weekends.

Airing for just two seasons on the History Channel, Six is a dramatization of the lives of SEAL Team Six, the infamous counter-terrorism unit of the U.S. Navy. In the first season, former senior officer Rip Taggart (Walton Goggins), now working as a private contractor, is kidnapped in Nigeria by Boko Haram. Thus begins a season-long rescue mission organized by Taggart's former teammates in SEAL Team Six, along with past sins coming back to haunt the squad.

Six is an ensemble show that starred Kyle Schmid (Being Human), Juan Pablo Raba (Narcos), Jaylen Moore (Homeland), Edwin Hodge (The Purge), and Olivia Munn who joined in Season 2. But arguably the show's main anchor is Barry Sloane, who plays Joe "Bear" Graves, designation Foxtrot Delta 1. In the first season, Bear and his wife Lena (Brianne Davis) are traumatized by the loss of their first born baby. As Bear and Lena work to try again, Bear is pulled into the dangerous job of leading an emotionally divided team to rescue their former superior.

From the start, fans of Call of Duty will recognize Sloane costumed in army fatigues and boots. While he doesn't have the majestic mutton chops in Six as he does in Modern Warfare, Sloane's deep voice and commanding presence is immediately recognizable. At times Six starts to look like a TV version of Modern Warfare, if you squint hard enough.

However, there are obvious differences between Sloane as Bear and Sloane as Captain Price. Besides the fact Bear is an American soldier and Price is with the British Special Air Service (SAS), Bear is more burdened, haunted, and troubled than Price, who seems immovable even when things are dire. Early in the Modern Warfare story, Price doesn't blink when he throws over an innocent person strapped to a bomb vest. Watch a few episodes of Six, and you get the impression Bear would have had a harder time thinking through that same scenario.

Aside from Sloane's involvement, Six stands on its own as an emotionally gripping, if intelligently lightweight series that was simply eclipsed by everything else on television.

The show stands out for its surprising insight and crystal-clear conflicts that believably kept everyone from moving past their mistakes. Watching these archetypal alpha males try to move beyond their personal demons will keep you pressing "Next Episode" every time. The competent, shooty-shooty action scenes are just a sweet bonus.

But just as Six was enlightening and brave in its portrait of the helplessness the men and women of the armed forces often feel, the show didn't make thoughtful commentary on the billion-dollar industrial military complex. The show illustrated SEAL Team Six as being full of souls shaken by their actions, but it never tried to resolve those issues.

In 2020, Six can only be talked about in the past tense. It was one of the History Channel's ambitious attempts at scripted programming alongside Vikings, but it never attracted the same sizable audience as its Nordic cousin. Despite strong ratings in its first season, the poor performance of Season 2 led to History giving Six the axe in June 2018. But in the two years since it went off the air, Six remains as reliable and tactical in its storytelling. Its short lifespan may not guarantee a binge beyond a whole weekend. But for fans of Call of Duty trying to break up marathon sessions of Warzone, it gets the job done.

Six is streaming now on Hulu.