Netflix’s heart-thumping political thriller will make you wish we had a leader with the same backbone as Jones’s Abigail Dalton
TV has always found drama in politics. From classics like The West Wing and The Thick of It to the more recent COBRA and The Diplomat, the secretive goings-on of the White House and Whitehall have proven fertile ground for skullduggery, intense state-of-the-nation debates, and – more often than not – hilarity. And the trend shows no sign of letting up: Channel 4 has just announced that Sherlock writer Steven Moffat is working on Number 10, a fictional take on the seat of power but with “real problems”.
Netflix’s latest addition to the collection, Hostage, takes a similar approach, with the migrant crisis, budget cuts, and a European shift to the hard right all feeding into the story. The British series is created by the Oscar-nominated writer of Bridge of Spies, Matt Charman, and imagines Suranne Jones as our Prime Minister – we should be so lucky.
On paper, the plot seems rather convoluted: Britain is going through a catastrophic medicine shortage, and PM Abigail Dalton is preparing for a historic summit with the French President, Vivienne Toussaint (Julie Delpy), hoping to secure a steady supply of drugs from our European neighbours.
But the tough-talking Toussaint has her own agenda. She’s up for re-election, and she wants to install French border control officers on British soil to appeal to more right-wing voters. The discussions are terse, but interrupted when Abigail’s husband Alex (Ashley Thomas) – a doctor working for Médecins Sans Frontières in French Guyana – is kidnapped. Suddenly, Toussaint (who has the authority to send in French soldiers to rescue Alex) has the upper hand.
But that storyline turns out to be just the beginning, and before long Hostage spirals into a heart-thumping thrill ride of political backstabbing, social unrest, and murder plots. Turns out, the kidnapping is part of a grander scheme to make Abigail resign from her post – something she’s not prepared to do even in the direst, most dangerous circumstances.
Hostage is some of Jones’s best work – quite the achievement when your past roles include Gemma Foster of Doctor Foster, Anne Lister of Gentleman Jack, and bunny boiler Karen McDonald in Coronation Street (her most underrated performance, if you ask me). Jones balances Abigail’s public-facing prime ministerial stoicism with her much softer family persona. When the two collide and Abigail must choose between saving her husband or her country, Jones manages the impossible and makes us feel sorry for a politician.
As the series hurtles towards its stressful, compulsive crescendo, things do veer into silly territory, and a willingness to suspend belief is needed to get fully on board. That’s easily achieved when the acting, pacing and writing are all working to make even the most far-fetched plot points convincing. After all, dramas based on real political skirmishes – take Brexit: The Uncivil War and Partygate – always end up being a bit boring, with no bombs or secret underground bunkers to be found.
Hostage is one of the best British dramas I’ve seen this year, and I couldn’t tear myself away from all five episodes – which is why I wish this wasn’t a Netflix show. It has all the hallmarks of what we used to call “watercooler TV” – gob smacking cliffhangers, shocking reveals and a smattering of red herrings to discuss with colleagues the next day. If it was released on a weekly basis on one of our terrestrial channels, Hostage could have been as much as a cultural moment as the BBC’s political thriller Bodyguard was back in 2018.
Alas, the streaming age has killed off such excitement and now we shall all have to endure the threat of spoilers for a series that would have been perfect for a nationwide watch.
‘Hostage’ is streaming on Netflix
