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The hit British thriller Bodyguard finally premieres stateside on Netflix today and its first 20 minutes will take you on a heart-stopping ride.
Now the rule with most Netflix dramas is that they are slow burns. That’s a nice way of saying the first episode is usually kind of boring, but by Episode 2 (or 3), you’re in. Bodyguard is nothing like this. From the opening shot it hooks into you and takes you flying at a breakneck speed.
Bodyguard is the BBC’s latest runaway hit. Its finale pulled in the biggest numbers for the BBC in a decade, and it stunned audiences with its bracing plot twists and high-stakes drama. Bodyguard stars Richard “Robb Stark” Madden as David Budd, a former soldier and elite police officer who gets assigned to be the Home Secretary’s bodyguard. It’s a job David can do, but his conscience is torn. That’s because he vehemently disagrees with her conservative, nationalist, war-mongering politics. For her part, Home Secretary Julia Montague (Keeley Hawes) believes she is making moves that will not only secure her power, but national safety.
That’s the basic set-up of Bodyguard, but the series’ opening 20 minutes seems to have nothing to do with this storyline. Richard Madden’s David wakes up on a train heading into London late at night. We see that his young children are sleeping beside him. While the train is stopped, a man throwing out a burner phone in a trash bin catches his eye. David tries to shrug off his concern, but soon notices the one of the train’s conductors acting…peculiarly. She sneaks out of the compartment and knocks on a locked bathroom door to no answer. David can’t help but to follow the agitated conductor out, all while his kids are still fast asleep, left under the gaze of a total stranger.
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Richard Madden
It is here that David reveals that he knows there’s an intelligence threat on the train. He sussed it out, as he is “an operational firearms commander with specialist protection,” aka a British Secret Service officer. Or, if you will, a down-to-earth James Bond. And what follows is a nail-biting mini-movie about David’s attempts to foil a possible terrorist attack on the train. He has to deal with the challenges of blinkering cellular service and real human fear. David’s not just afraid for his children, but for the suspects in question since he knows if he whiffs it, it could mean their deaths.
It’s an audacious way to kick off a television series in 2018 because the show doesn’t rush through this story. It lets it unravel in dreadful real time. My heart beat thrumming with adrenaline-fueled worry the first time I watched it and I couldn’t help but to hold onto myself for dear life. The rest of the series builds off this tension by spring-boarding into a tableau of ever-increasing paranoia. These first 20 minutes set the mood for some awful, tragic, brilliant storytelling that will keep you on the proverbial edge of your seat…and Netflix’s Bodyguard does just that.
Bodyguard is now streaming on Netflix.
