On Guard

We've been in what many call the era of "prestige television" for years now, and yet among some, there's still a sense that British television series are often extra prestigious. One that I'd heard good things about was Bodyguard, a political thriller from 2018 starring Richard Madden (of Game of Thrones) and Keeley Hawes.

Bodyguard is a six-part, complete story following David Budd, a PTSD-stricken veteran in the British protection service who is assigned to guard Julia Montague, an ambitious right-wing politician. Multiple attempts on the minister's life suggest a conspiracy with a personal connection to Budd, who struggles to sort out his own feelings to perform a job in which his personal feelings aren't supposed to matter.

Right away, I found a lot to like about Bodyguard. It's suspenseful and patient in equal measure; the first episode opens with a long sequence running fully a quarter of the hour, in which the main character deals with a bomb threat. It does a great job delivering the tension you want in an action-thriller like this, while still making clear that in this story, character will play a role.

The twists and turns of the story over the first few episodes were just as engaging to me. The plot thickens in fun ways, and a particular twist right at the halfway point (ending episode three) really shocked me by going to a place I would never have anticipated. It was somewhere around this point in the narrative that it struck me that creator Jed Mercurio had perhaps been inspired by the action and tension of the American series 24 -- then decided to do his own, much more sober, far less fantastical take.

Unfortunately, the final episode of Bodyguard flushed all the seriousness away. The final 20 minutes expose the entire plot that's been hidden through the story... and it is preposterous. The mastermind is revealed to have Bond villain-level machinations, a convoluted plan that could have failed in countless ways (and indeed, it has) when a more direct approach would have been far more effective. The ending asks you to play back through many moments from earlier in the series in light of new knowledge, and when you do, it's utter nonsense. The series that started out feeling like it was trying to be "more serious 24" ends up being exactly as ridiculous as 24 (but without the "big swing" moments that made 24 so delicious).

A story ending at a bad destination doesn't always invalidate the journey. But I think it hurts a lot in this case. The characters of Bodyguard may be more real, but their emotions are powerfully repressed, leaking out only in rare, carefully chosen moments. This creates scenes that would absolutely be the clips you'd show during the "and the nominees are..." montage, but leaves you feeling the performances are too restrained, even flat, the rest of the time. That leaves you to focus on the story most of the time, and if that story has a weak ending? It brings down the whole.

At the end of all six episodes, I felt the whole experience had been a B-. A B- with some A moments in it, yes... but with some equally bad moments to result in that average. I'd say the show lands in a spot where I probably wouldn't recommend it -- and yet it's short enough and requires a small enough commitment that you probably could sample the first one and know if it seemed like your thing.