Bodyguard has lost its (sex) appeal
It’s no good. Without the crackle of static between Home Secretary Julia Montague (Keeley Hawes) and hunky PS David Budd (Richard Madden), BBC One’s Bodyguard has become just another dogged detective drama. Less sexual chemistry, more tedious geometry. I kept drifting off during Sunday’s episode, then suddenly waking up and demanding to know: “Who’s that?” “That’s the man in the E-fit, but what’s he got to do with it?” Either I’m thick, or it was really hard to follow. And no one showed their bottom.
Clues seem to be pointing towards the Home Secretary being bumped off by a highly organised, secretive and ruthless gang of senior Tories working with the criminal underworld. Can we get them to do Brexit?
But is Julia really dead? Bodyguard writer Jed Mercurio said he decided to kill her off halfway through because viewers would never expect such a major star to be written out.
It’s certainly unusual, although not entirely unknown, for a leading lady to make an untimely exit. Audiences think they can rely on the famous faces to make it to the end, so Montague’s murder was a deafening blow.
Whatever Mercurio says, I suspect Hawes is going to make a miraculous reappearance.
Meanwhile, will we ever figure out which of the MI5 people are baddies? Will David’s boss stop sitting on her desk? Is David’s wife’s new boyfriend a Russian agent with an interest in Salisbury? Will Madden need to use his three facial expressions at once when his lover comes back to life? A nation eagerly awaits.