SERIES
The British home secretary is a tough and unbending woman, but she and her bodyguard get close, writes
Thrilling twists & forbidden trysts
Don’t know how the Brits did it — waiting week after week in suspense for the next episode of Bodyguard. And they did this for six weeks! Crazy. It’s one of those TV shows that you have to binge, and thank goodness you can do that now on Netflix. If you still don’t know what the fuss is about, Bodyguard is not a series about the Whitney Houston-Kevin Costner film. Sorry. It is, however, the biggest drama to hit the UK in more than a decade. Now even the box set (like it’s 2013) is setting records in Britain.
Jed Mercurio (Line of Duty) is the mastermind responsible for this nail-biting, propulsive and sleek thriller. It stars Keeley Hawes (Line of Duty, Death at a Funeral, Spooks ) as the formidable British home secretary Julia Montague and Richard
Madden (Game of Thrones) as the intense David Budd, a police officer who has been assigned to Montague as her (very) close protection officer.
The beginning is frenetically good. We first meet Budd on the train going back to London with his two young children. Ever diligent, he spots a man destroying a cellphone and sim card before boarding the train. He notices that the train security is looking at particular people who are on the train. He quickly puts two and two together and realises that there is danger. In the bathroom he finds Nadia, a woman who has been strapped in a suicide vest and is scared out of her wits. He talks her down and becomes a hero.
His captain, Pippa Haywood as Lorraine Craddock, head of the specialist protection branch, promotes him to the cushy position of bodyguard to Montague.
Budd is conflicted as Montague is everything he distrusts about politicians. She was a forceful proponent in the war in Afghanistan, while Budd was one of the soldiers on the ground who saw first-hand the damage done. He has PTSD and is hiding the fact so he doesn’t have to go for therapy and face what has happened. He is filled with terror and shame, and this has spilt into his marriage. As a consequence he is separated from his wife.
When he meets Montague she lives up to his expectations. Hard, tough and conservative, she is unbending on RIPA 18 — a security bill that she wants passed, which will give government more access to private information of citizens in order to root out terrorist activity. As she says in her speech, “We’re not after you if you type into your search engine B-O-O-B. But we ought to know if you type in B-O-M-B.”
RIPA 18 puts a target on her. It seems that no one wants it passed, from her ex-husband who is also in government and jealous of her power, to the head of the police who thinks she is transferring their command to that of the security forces department. There’s infighting and political manoeuvring. Weasels, toads and twists abound.
Budd and Montague become close. She lets her guard down bit by bit. Despite his misgivings about her, he falls for her and becomes even more protective. The chemistry between the two of them is sizzling and becomes the driving force of the show. Everything that Budd does from now on is to protect Montague.
But there are some faults in the show. Firstly, some critics think it is unrealistic as mostly all of the people in positions of power are women.
This would be great in real life but it is not so and to portray it this way is “airbrushing reality”, as said recently by Victoria screenwriter Daisy Goodwin. But kudos to Mercurio for developing female characters who are multifaceted.
Secondly, the terrorist storyline is hackneyed and stereotypical. But the show does try and add a bit of greyness to the debate.
And finally, there are a few implausible moments. But it’s a thriller with all the elements of a blockbuster action movie, so it does become somewhat ridiculously overthe-top towards the end. Mercurio is always trying to up the ante, making sure that what he delivers is far from what everyone expects.
Despite all these problems, Bodyguard is tense and the viewer has no clue how it will all be resolved. Will Budd spy on Montague for his bosses? What was she doing having secret meetings with the head of the security forces? What explosive information did they give to her? Why did she visit the prime minister in secret? Who is behind the threats to Budd and his family? Who wanted to bomb his kids’ school?
Don’t even try to guess.
Available on Netflix from October 24
We’re not after you if you type into your search engine B-O-O-B. But we ought to know if you type in B-O-M-B