TV & Streaming

When the derivative Netflix spy drama Treason premiered in 2022, I used the Charlie Cox vehicle as an excuse to write a small treatise on the institutional misuse and overuse of in medias res openings.

I’ve occasionally needed to reference what I wrote, but I’ve never been able to consistently remember what show I pegged the analysis to. Treason has a wholly generic title, and while it has an OK cast and the recognizable structure of a television series, it’s among the more forgettable dramas of an era that has had more than a few forgettable dramas. There are countless shows, some quite successful, that are far worse than whatever that Charlie Cox show was called, but few that have dissipated into the ether as thoroughly.

Competition comes in the form of the new Netflix drama Hostage. Like that Charlie Cox thing, it’s a London-set five-parter with an instantly negligible title, a solid ensemble and the discernible shape of a television thriller, rendered near-generic by flimsy characterizations, an illogical central action and an ending both silly and cribbed from A Few Good Men to a degree that I’d call parody except for how purposeless the cribbing is.

That this show and that similarly search-challenged Charlie Cox thing both hail from creator Matt Charman suggests a writer skilled at pitching a sturdy hook, but badly in need of more development time to allow the finished product to live up to its potential.

In the case of Hostage, the potential stems from the tantalizing prospect of watching stars Suranne Jones (Gentleman Jack) and Julie Delpy (the Before trilogy) in an acting power struggle — a promise that isn’t quite an empty tease, but never gets delivered upon fully.

Jones plays Abigail Dalton, semi-recently elected as British prime minister. Dalton’s biggest campaign promise was to boost the National Health Service by gutting the military. She has succeeded in the latter, but not the former, as the NHS is in the midst of a shortage of vital medical resources. A crisis is developing.

Dalton is hoping to receive assistance from Vivienne Toussaint (Delpy), the French president, in London for a summit. Toussaint is in the middle of a re-election cycle that has forced her to kowtow to France’s extreme right. Although she has the medical supplies that England needs, she’s prepared to use this power imbalance for her own political needs, which may or may not be nefarious.

The summit becomes more complicated when Dalton’s husband, a Doctors Without Borders physician (Ashley Thomas’ Alex), is taken hostage in French Guiana along with three other doctors. The kidnappers’ only demand is Dalton’s resignation, which seems like a no-brainer to Dalton’s petulant teenage daughter (Isobel Akuwudike’s Sylvie). But if you’ve seen a political thriller before, you probably know that global leaders are big fans of saying that they don’t negotiate with terrorists.

The kidnapping — the logic and strategy of which unravel if you even partially consider them — is predictably part of a conspiracy, one that both goes higher and less high than you could possibly imagine, and quickly compromises Toussaint as well.

The respective challenges that Dalton and Toussaint face are vaguely morally complex and, I guess, compelling, albeit in a gendered way that Hostage isn’t nearly smart enough to explore. Would a largely generic male prime minister whose largely generic female spouse was taken hostage ever be judged negatively for choosing job and country over family? Probably not. Is that relevant here? Barely. Toussaint’s own involvement is tied to a double standard that the show hints at, though it lacks the mettle for deeper engagement. Hostage references things, but is about very little.

The show is convinced that the dilemma is inherently interesting, and it does, if nothing else, give both Jones and Delpy interesting things to play. But the dilemma functions instead of individual characteristics for either woman. They’re defined by the power of their positions and the fragility of their significant others (Vincent Perez briefly plays Toussaint’s media mogul husband) rather than by voices or personality traits. For an episode or two, there’s enough material related to how these women attempt to project power that it’s possible to ignore that neither character behaves as a human outside of the construction of the pressure-filled plot.

It isn’t that the show has a specific disrespect for its two central figures. Every single supporting character is their basic logline and nothing else. Sylvie is introduced after a rowdy night on the town that could have left her and her family embarrassed, but nothing from that introduction is ever relevant again. Toussaint’s step-son Matheo (Corey Mylchreest) is introduced as a leftist willing to protest against his own step-mom, but nothing from that introduction is ever relevant again. The key thing we need to know about Lucian Msamati’s Kofi, one of Dalton’s advisors, isn’t revealed until late in the series, and then even that key detail turns out to be irrelevant.

And those are the series’ most developed characters. At least it’s an iron-clad guarantee that no matter how little you give him to do, Msamati will be watchable! Dalton has a team of aides, only one of whom (Hiftu Quasem’s Ayesha) is given a name (but no additional traits beyond that). Toussaint has only one aide, Jehnny Beth’s Adrienne, whose ubiquity is a spoiler, though viewers will be unable to come up with even a single adjective to describe her. Even Dalton’s husband, whose kidnapping is the hinge for the entire series, could only be described as “doctorly.” Although he’s been taken with three additional colleagues, somehow nobody thought, “Wouldn’t we care more about these people if any of them had a single sympathetic quality?”

If you have an ensemble of characters who aren’t characters, good luck getting viewers to invest on even a superficial level, and good luck getting anybody to care when thriller conventions demand that you kill somebody off in order to simulate stakes.

There’s an off-chance that with six or eight episodes to tell this story, Charman and directors Isabelle Sieb and Amy Neil might have been able to give viewers a few more points of attachment, but the series already feels like its resources are spread thin. The hostage subplot, which was shot in the Canary Islands, is one or two drone shots of a jungle but nothing to generate excitement or tension or visual variety. Back in the U.K., we get some interiors that might as well resemble 10 Downing Street, but it’s mostly indistinguishable sets. The London location work is limited, and when crowd scenes are required, the budget looks to have been enough for a dozen people at most.

From characters to action to the lip service paid to current events and issues, everything in Hostage is sparse. Other than “people like when their politicians are honest,” Hostage has few ideas; at times, it plays like a half-developed spinoff of The Diplomat, a show with an actual perspective on the challenges faced by women in power.

This is a first draft for something that could have been developed and finessed into a series of substance. Delpy, Jones and those curious enough to watch them going head-to-head deserved better than … whatever this show was called.