'Bodyguard' on Netflix is a Thriller Whodunit For Our Times

Bodyguard, the biggest show in the U.K. since Downton Abbey, officially arrives in America on Netflix as part of a continuing campaign by the streaming service to partner with channels in need of budget boosts in order to gain exclusive first-run rights outside the home country. When the drama originally premiered in the U.K. this past summer, it had the most substantial numbers for a broadcast show since 2011, with 11 million tuning in for the finale, a figure last seen when Downton Abbey peaked at the end of Season 2. But where Downton Abbey was a conservative pastoral, soft-focused period piece about that lovely time when aristocrats still ruled and happy servants were grateful to work for them, Bodyguard is downright reactionary, speaking to an England in the throes of post-Brexit terror.

Set in present day, it opens with some of the most intense 20 minutes of TV seen all year, as Sgt. David Budd (Richard Madden, Game of Thrones, Cinderella), on his way home on a train with kids in tow, finds himself talking down a female suicide bomber in a carriage toilet. It's at once as terrifying as it is cliché. The would-be attacker is a woman in hijab, Nadiya (Anjli Mohindra), crying and sobbing as she reveals that her husband left her to do the deed and is somewhere else, planning to survive. In contrast, Budd is presented as a calm hero, a veteran with nerves of steel and a heart of gold, who is as reluctant to allow the police to shoot this poor woman as he is unwilling to let her blow up the train.