Hostage (Netflix)
Head for the bunkers — nuclear grade hokum incoming! The heart of British democracy is under attack, not from the Russians, nor Islamist extremists, but from an even bigger bunch of loonies… Netflix.
The five-part political drama Hostage sees Suranne Jones playing a Labour prime minister who has to save the NHS (hurrah!) while facing down a neo-Fascist French president (boo!) planning to station Euro-troops in England (boo! hiss!).
Meanwhile, there’s a boatload of African asylum seekers fleeing persecution who need safe haven in the UK — and, gulp, they’ve all got ebola.
And just when you think the stakes couldn’t be any higher, masked gunmen only go and kidnap the PM’s lovely husband, Dr Alex (Ashley Thomas).
He’s in South America with a Medecins Sans Frontieres team, giving vaccinations to happy village children and their poor-but-grateful mums, when terrorists take all the doctors prisoner.
They shoot a translator dead. At first this appears to be more proof of what rotten rotters they are, but Dr Alex overhears them talking in English, so perhaps they just realised they wouldn’t need a translator.
With a gun to his head, Dr Alex is forced to record a video message to his wife. She must resign within 24 hours or one of the hostages will be killed.
Suranne Jones, who excels at melodrama, does her best to breathe credibility into all this over-egged nonsense.
We’re so used to seeing her in extreme situations — wreaking vengeance on an unfaithful husband in Doctor Foster, solving murders aboard a submarine in Vigil — that it doesn’t seem too delulu when she takes command of a hostage rescue attempt… and then apologises to the Chief of the Defence Staff for failing to let him know what she was doing.
Mind you, it’s not much of a rescue. British special forces have apparently been reduced to one soldier, a grizzled veteran called Thomas.
And he’s armed only with a pistol and a telescopic camera that looks as though he ordered it from one of those sales booklets that fall out of the Sunday supplements.
He probably bought a nice pair of orthopaedic sandals and a reversible jacket at the same time.
If the PM has any chance of getting her husband back, she’s going to have to rely on the French military.
But President Vivienne Toussaint (Julie Delpy) has her own problems — she’s been having an affair with someone she really shouldn’t, and now a blackmailer is threatening to release a video of them in bed together.
No wonder Vivienne is so spiteful and mean to her family… though it doesn’t explain why, when they’re alone, they speak English with ‘Allo ‘Allo accents.
If all that stretches your credulity, consider this. It’s only in a fictional drama as bonkers as this that Labour can manage to elect a female leader.
