In case you’re in search of the perfect thriller on Netflix proper now, you actually ought to cease scrolling previous Bodyguard. The six-episode BBC collection from 2018 is leaner, meaner, and extra emotionally compelling than something the algorithm is at the moment pushing at you (The Evening Agent, Reachertake your choose). Richard Madden gained a Golden Globe for it, however regardless of that, a second season didn’t materialize — and, it seems, which may’ve been the perfect factor that ever occurred to it.
What Is ‘Bodyguard’ About?
Created by Jed Mercurio – a person who has made a profession out of turning institutional paranoia into compulsive tv with reveals like Line of Responsibility – Bodyguard follows David Budd (Madden), a adorned warfare veteran turned police safety officer assigned to protect Julia Montague (Keeley Hawes), the UK’s bold, polarizing Residence Secretary. The catch: he basically disagrees with all the things she stands for. Hawes makes Montague formidable, injecting an unknowable high quality to her that retains the viewers second-guessing itself, and the slow-burn rigidity between the 2 leads provides the present its stakes lengthy earlier than the assassination makes an attempt and political conspiracies kick in. What begins as a procedural shortly escalates into one thing more durable to pin down; a present that’s half psychological thriller, half conspiracy drama, and wholly gripping.
A heart-racing opening practice sequence doubles as Bodyguard’s thesis assertion. It’s each a warning and a promise: this present is all fuel, no brakes. A bomb risk, dealt with in close to real-time, with no swelling rating guiding your nerves and no shorthand to reassure you that all the things shall be advantageous. Budd scrambles by way of the automobiles with the urgency of somebody who has witnessed the unthinkable and is petrified of seeing it once more. With one disaster thwarted (however lots extra on the way in which), the present builds on all that dread and adrenaline by thrusting its hero into one more uncomfortable state of affairs. He’s assigned to Montague’s safety element as a reward for his heroism, and the friction is apparent from the primary scene they share. He thinks her insurance policies bought troopers killed; she has no explicit curiosity in his opinion. The skilled dynamic is taut and watchable by itself phrases, however Mercurio retains complicating it. By the tip of the primary episode, you have already began quietly revising your learn on at the very least one character, which is precisely what the present needs you to be doing.
The present is constructed round a internet of overlapping conspiracies. There is a political energy play involving Montague’s sweeping new surveillance laws, which earns her loads of harmful enemies in excessive locations. There are folks inside her personal political orbit who need her humiliated. There are folks additional out who need her useless. And there is at the very least one particular person in Budd’s speedy circle whose loyalties aren’t what they look like. For first-time viewers: go in realizing as little as potential past the essential setup. The shock and awe are greater than price it.
Netflix’s ‘Bodyguard’ Works Higher as a One-Season Thriller
There’s sufficient motion throughout Bodyguard’s six episodes to earn its style placement, however the true draw of this story is Madden and the way he performs what needs to be a standard hero with an ambiguity simply slight sufficient to make you hesitate labeling him the “good man.” He is a person working on fumes – anxious, post-traumatic, fully out of his depth on this shady government-run labyrinth populated by MI5 brokers and crime lords. Budd’s good at his job, nevertheless it prices him one thing each time he’s out within the area, and Madden makes positive to remind us of that with bodily tics and exasperated expressions that give the impression this man is just some seconds shy of a psychological breakdown always.
All of it ends with a setup, a suicide vest, and a tense standoff that feels doomed to finish badly for the characters you’ve come to care about, however the necessary takeaway right here is that it ends. Trendy storytelling has largely deserted the whole ending in favor of the strategic pause. Streaming collection like to depart threads dangling, questions unanswered, and all indicators pointed towards a follow-up which will or might not ever arrive. Bodyguard‘s finale untangles the conspiracy in a manner that is logical reasonably than handy, bringing Budd’s arc to a conclusion that lands emotionally as a result of the present has finished the work to earn it. It is a tidy piece of tv, one other nod that makes it distinctive amongst its friends. It’s additionally why these unrealized guarantees of Season 2 really feel much less irritating. When Bodyguard hit, a follow-up appeared inevitable. The rankings have been there, and Netflix appeared , too. Even Mercurio entertained the chance. However years handed, and nothing occurred.
Thrillers are notoriously troublesome to stretch out. Their power is dependent upon unresolved rigidity, and as soon as the central thriller is solved, the present has to fabricate new stakes from scratch. Lots of instances, that course of cheapens no matter made the unique work. However that doesn’t occur right here. Bodyguard tells one story, fully, with out overstaying its welcome or softening its edges to depart room for enlargement. The result’s one thing more and more onerous: a thriller with a starting, a center, and an precise finish. It’s the whole binge-watching package deal, and nonetheless higher than something trending in the meanwhile.