The Golden Globe Awards are a bit of an odd duck. Presented by journalists covering the film industry for foreign outlets, the Globes mark the unofficial beginning to movie award season, but also recognize excellence in television. And while the Oscars and Emmys might be considered more prestigious, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association does its best to make the Golden Globes stand apart from its glittery rivals.
This year’s Golden Globe ceremony brought plenty of surprises, but no one was shocked to see Netflix continue its formidable rise as an award-winning juggernaut. The streaming network’s new comedy The Kominsky Method took awards for best comedy series and best actor in a comedy series, while critically acclaimed Roma won best foreign language film and best director.
A surprise did come for Netflix, however, when Richard Madden took home the trophy for best actor in a drama series for his performance in the political thriller Bodyguard.
Bodyguard hasn’t accrued the same American fanfare as Netflix’s other blockbuster titles, but when it premiered on BBC One in the U.K. last summer, it became a national sensation, drawing viewership numbers not seen since Downton Abbey. Netflix quickly picked the series up for global distribution and made it available for Americans’ binging pleasure last November.
And it is indeed very binge-worthy.
Madden (formerly Robb Stark on HBO’s Game of Thrones) plays David Budd, a war-hardened police officer assigned to protect Julia Montague — a hawkish and calculating Conservative Home Secretary played by Keeley Hawes (currently Louisa Durrell on PBS’s The Durrells in Corfu).
Budd is brooding and troubled, physically and emotionally scarred from military service in Afghanistan. Montague is aloof, cutting, and hungry for higher office. When their paths collide, sparks fly.
On paper, Bodyguard seems to have more in common with Scandal or House of Cards than other British megahits like Downton Abbey or The Crown. But despite its lack of costumed aristocrats and garish manors, Bodyguard still has plenty of understated English goodness to satisfy even the snobbiest Anglophile.
In typical British fashion, the first episode is a slow burn, leading viewers to think that the show will focus on the obvious sexual tension between its protagonists. By the second episode, however, a neck-snapping plot twist jolts viewers to the realization that Bodyguard won’t proceed as expected.
That whiplash moment is just the first of many across the series’ six episodes, and each time a new twist explodes on screen, the show pivots dramatically. Political thrillers are notorious for being formulaic, but Bodyguard keeps its action sequences fresh, frequent, and very fun.
The show largely succeeds because of its fast pace. A different politically-minded drama might make Budd’s post-traumatic stress or Montague’s Thatcher-esque worldview key plot points that require more exposition, but Bodyguard has no interest in exploring the pathos of its protagonists. The show prefers to add new kinks in the plot than pause to over-develop characters or over-expose subplots.
However, maintaining that fast pace comes with costs. Too often, the show relies on clichés to keep itself moving, especially in its treatment of its female lead. On the surface, Montague is portrayed as a woman in total control, but, per the show’s title, she also needs protecting: she must be a damsel in distress. When the plot jostles her character between those two sexual paradigms, it can feel sloppy.
For her part, Keeley Hawes goes all in, playing Montague as if Theresa May had been dropped on the set of The Devil Wears Prada. Bodyguard is weakest during its quieter scenes when there are no suspenseful stimuli to grip the audience. As such, Hawes has a tall order, often oscillating between dame and damsel – sometimes within the same scene. But she embraces the task, deftly serving caricature without becoming cartoonish.
That lack of character development is present elsewhere too. The rivalries among dueling parliamentarians and Machiavellian bureaucrats often go unexplained. Muslim terrorists are painted as existential threats, but their motives are vague, and their portrayal flirts dangerously with Islamophobic stereotypes.
Indeed, there are many other instances when Bodyguard forgoes discussing big ideas in favor of perpetually unfolding action. The war on terror. Radical conservatism. The politics of sex. These heavy topics are all broached during the course of the series, but never explored; the show uses them for scene setting while avoiding being mired by their weightiness.
Loose ends like that might be liabilities for a different show – a show that cares about making a grander statement – but Bodyguard’s job is to keep viewers white-knuckled and on the edge of their seats. What’s more, the show uses its loose ends to enhance its tone. The lack of exposition concerning auxiliary characters and sideplots mimics the murky nature of the national security apparatus itself: pull too hard on the wrong thread and the whole system may collapse around you.
Luckily for Bodyguard, viewers don’t have much time to pick at threads and investigate what is or isn’t a red herring; the constantly rising body count keeps their attention focused elsewhere.
Ultimately, the loose ends and clichés are forgivable because they don’t matter. Bodyguard isn’t a philosophical treatise on the dangers of the surveillance state. It’s an Alfred Hitchcock mystery wrapped in a Tom Clancy thriller.
The show doesn’t break new ground or reshape the genre, and that’s just fine. In today’s world where truth almost always feels more deranged than fiction, Bodyguard reminds viewers of a simpler time when political thrill rides were simply the product of a writer’s overactive imagination.
Bodyguard is enjoyable absurdity at its best: the kind that doesn’t make you think too hard, but leaves you so far on the edge of your seat that you can’t help but click ‘play next episode.’