Hostage Is The Smartest Show Of 2025, Hiding In A Conspiracy Thriller
Sisters are handling geopolitics for themselves.
When you hear “Netflix conspiracy thriller,” it’s easy to imagine the archetype: a no-holds-barred action thriller focused on some badass guy with a complicated past, taking on the powers that be despite not knowing who to trust. It’s the plot of The Night Agent, it’s the plot of The Recruit, and it’s the plot of Bodyguard, though admittedly the latter gets an added forbidden romance storyline.
But Netflix’s latest foray into this genre takes the action out of the streets and into the inner workings of governance, with an added twist of what it means to be a woman in power, and all the emotional baggage that comes with it.
A hostage situation is just the start of the dystopian conspiracy thriller parts of Hostage.
Surranne Jones, best known as playing the titular role in the criminally overlooked drama series Doctor Foster and the human version of the TARDIS in the Doctor Who episode “The Doctor’s Wife,” plays Abigail Dalton, the Prime Minister of the U.K. elected on a platform of healthcare reform. But now, well into her tenure in 10 Downing Street, her opponents are railing against her for gutting the military and fumbling the latest crisis: a shortage of medications, including lifesaving cancer treatments.
Her only hope is French President Vivienne Toussaint (Julie Delpy), but she has an agenda all her own: a hope to shore up the British border with her own troops, something Abigail won’t stand for. However, this diplomatic tussle is soon overshadowed by something much bigger: Abigail’s husband is taken hostage along with his fellow doctors on a mission in French Guiana. Suddenly, Abigail has to rely on the military she defunded and, because the abduction happened on French soil, her opponent in this negotiation.
Embroiled in this blackmailing drama is Vivienne’s stepson Matheo (Corey Mylchreest) and Abigail’s husband Alex (Ashley Thomas) and daughter Sylvie (Isobel Akuwudike). Their interpersonal drama is just as heated as the political drama, even when the two go hand in hand. This show doesn’t follow two women torn between duty and family because they are women, but because they understand the delicate balance between the two.
Hostage doubles down on its commentary of the political sphere by including not one but two female leaders.
The final two episodes of this five-episode miniseries take what could have been a near- or alternate-future and plunge it into dystopia, including everything from terror plots, false flag operations, and characters we’ve known from the beginning revealing their true allegiance to the bad guys. By the end of the show, when Abigail is forced to question everyone around her while cowering in a bomb shelter, Jones reaches a new high in her performance as she realizes the duty she owes to her family and her country don’t have to be mutually exclusive.
In this day and age, making any story about a woman in power risks feeling too rah-rah girl power — there’s a fine line between good representation and that one scene in Avengers: Endgame. But Hostage is a series that doesn’t ignore the fact its protagonists are women and how they face different expectations, all while telling a story with the same stakes as everything else.
