This
Netflix/
BBC series created by
Jed Mercurio, below (
Line of Duty,
Lady Chatterley’s Lover,
Frankenstein), was wildly popular across the pond, making its star,
Richard Madden (
Game of Thrones,
Cinderella,
Medici), a widely-speculated
replacement for
Daniel Craig upon his retirement from the
Bond franchise.
Madden is said to be in talks about Bond and also in line for another ‘Bodyguard’
series. The part surprised Madden and us with his recent Golden Globe
win (‘Best Performance in a TV Series’) for his charismatic policeman in the thriller,
having already distinguished himself in romantic roles. A sleeper was his lead in
A Promise with
Rebecca Hall and
Alan Rickman by French director
Patrice Leconte.
Madden made this tepid historical drama and box-office failure worth viewing. He
simply has that something extra that makes you watch and watch.
The salient feature of
Bodyguard is suspense, the kind of heart-in-mouth drama
that doesn’t sneak up on cats’ paws but seizes your attention from the very
first few minutes of the thriller, making it difficult for the reviewer to spoil the
action without in theory spoiling the experience.
Readers of my monthly reviews know I am somewhat cavalier about plot-spoiling —
and purposefully, rather than in disregard of the reader/viewer. Good material is
not about plot ins-and-outs so much as the journey; great stories are savored not
for ‘what happened’ but for the emotional arc the characters experience and the
more meaningful truths revealed by the story.
Knowing the plot basics positions one better to think about the characters’
growth, failures, and larger message, rather than having to keep track of the
plot mechanics as well as to continue assessing the characters’ ‘interiority’.
Hence we revisit
Death of a Salesman,
Hamlet,
The Godfather, etc.,
over and again to re-experience the characters handling of their travail — glad, in fact,
to have the plot basics out of the way. Sometimes a perfect spoil helps the viewer
through the twists and turns and into the thought-provoking stuff.
David Budd, our bodyguard, is a nervous-making protagonist to start — a
character whose history makes him arresting, above and beyond the police-
and-political machinations that drive the series. And Madden, here in his native
Scottish accent, compels your attention. He’s reluctantly separated from
his wife (
Sophie Rundle, lovely actress from
Peaky Blinders,
The Bletchley Circle,
Jamestown), largely it seems as the result of PTSD effects from his military
service in Afghanistan — one gathers his erratic, obsessive behavior has made him
a problematic partner. Budd, however, has a cool shell that he uses to insulate
himself from emotion and direct his obsessive focus to the task-at-hand.
Nevertheless his stress leaks constantly, and although we follow with confidence
as he disposes of threat after threat, we are nevertheless fearful that one of these
moments the tightly-wound Budd will blow. The ‘plot’ consists of crisis piled
on crisis providing ongoing anxiety to the viewer who worries for the outwardly
strong, inwardly brittle Budd.
Screen-writer Mercurio, himself a physician and a novelist, cleverly makes the
mental health issues of his protagonist immediate, but is not as clever at plotting.
The series launches with a near bang as Budd, a police officer traveling off-duty
by train with his two kids, confronts a woman passenger, a terrorist wearing a
suicide vest, threatening to blow herself up. Budd immediately shifts seamlessly into work mode — and his deft handling of a desperate situation gets him promoted to
protecting a prominent politician, Home Secretary Julia Montague, played by
Keeley Hawes (below, left, of
The Durrells in Corfu and
Line of Duty).
Julia Montague is a power player who showboats with a combination of bravado
and extreme politics, not as officious as Ted Cruz, but similarly temperamental and
difficult, sucking the air out of any situation. She’s a rabid military hawk; one
political axe she grinds is a push for more government surveillance of the public to
detect and prevent terrorism. (We worked our way in and out of this kind of
extreme government intrusiveness in the U.S. following 9/11; terrorism appears to
continue as a more immediate threat in Britain.)
Her politics are not only anathema to officer Budd, but annoy the Prime
Minister and make the Home Secretary a target for assassination from any number
of possible sources. The relationship that develops uneasily between
Montague and Budd nevertheless is full of fizz and smolder, causing a rapid rise in
tension in the early episodes, only to fizzle out as the series proceeds.
Later other characters are implicated in malfeasance and Mercurio’s
closing gambit is so full of implausibilities that it damages the fabric of the whole,
despite the terror of the moment remaining relentless.
Budd has wound himself into our own psyches and become so memorable that one
doesn’t walk away feeling entirely betrayed by failed plotting, but certainly let down.
In the main, Mercurio has satisfied in creating a rather transfixing main character
plunked in a scenario that sparks but doesn’t arc.
This is another example of a story that winds itself up brilliantly and fails to
climb down off the cliff. It is beyond me why so many good writers fall into this trap —
having a satisfying exit plan/resolution is so crucial to the whole. Mercurio’s
writing here leans too much on dizzying disposal of characters and complications
involving figures in whom we have little emotional investment. It’s gimmicky.
(The limited streaming series that marches beautifully to the richest, most worthy
conclusion of any I have watched in recent years is
Scott Frank’s brilliantly paced,
emotionally satisfying
Godless on Netflix, a Western with
Jeff Daniels and Brits
Jack O’Connell, and
Michelle Dockery.)
One hopes Mercurio takes into account the near-unanimous criticism of
Bodyguard that accompanied its praise and popularity and digs in more
satisfyingly to a few main characters. In plotting a second series, it would
complement the whole to include backstory and development of Budd’s relationship
with his separated spouse, Vicky, above, left.
The above post was written by our
monthly correspondent, Lee Liberman.
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