No, it’s not the serial killer ones, because I had enough of that in over a decade of reviewing crime fiction for The Detroit Free Press. And it’s not when they’re gory, because there are warnings online or in print and I stay away. I once asked a colleague about a best-selling friend’s new book and she said, “I wish I hadn’t read it—there are images I don’t think I can ever get out of my head.”
So with those books and shows ignored, what makes me cringe way too often is when they violate reality in such dumb ways you shout at the screen—or feel like it, anyway.
Case in point, and spoilers ahead: Hostage on Netflix. It stars too terrific actors, Surrane Jones from the gender-bending historical series Gentleman Jack and July Delpy who you might recognize from Two Days in Paris, a movie I’ve watched many times because it’s so damned funny.
Jones plays the new Prime Minister of the UK and Delpy plays the president of France facing a tough election where she’s being pushed to the right. The leaders have a summit to deal with the collapse of the NHS and extreme shortage of essential drugs, including cancer medications. I won’t mention the solution Delpy proposes, but her arrival sets off a cringe alert. You’d expect someone of that stature to have a large entourage of security, advisors, et al. She hardly has anyone with her as she swans into #10 Downing Street.
But it’s not just her. Her British summit partner also seems to have very few security guards and her staff—with one exception—looks like they just graduated from university. It seems very odd and from the beginning, you wonder about how safe these two world leaders will be—a good concern given what gets the plot rolling.
Jones’s husband is a doctor with Médecins sans Frontières and he’s on a mission in French Guiana. He has no protection whatsoever (not even his own gun) and the throw-away explanation is that there haven’t been any incidents there lately.
My husband paused the show and said, “Do you believe that?” It was a verbal eye roll. His point: incidents or not, no spouse of a world leader would be anywhere without some kind of protection detail.
Fiction and screen crime writing are full of what we in the mystery world call “fem jep”—women in ridiculous situations of danger, large and small. You know the deal: there’s a serial killer loose, a main or minor character comes home, doesn’t turn on her lights or lock her door, heads for the fridge to uncork yesterday’s white wine and pour a glass with the only light shining from inside the fridge. Mayhem ensues.
Would the husband’s issue be “doc-jep”? Whatever, it’s just plain stupid and he’s kidnapped of course. When a PM is on vacation in real life, they apparently have at least four personal protection officers, so perhaps in reality a spouse might only have two? That wouldn’t have stopped the larger group of kidnappers, but it would have been more believable and actually much more dramatic.
I’m married to an introvert who enjoys thrillers as much as I do and he’s not a critical person or a griper, but over the five episodes, he had a lot more to say as he rewrote the bad script. Being laid up after surgery for a broken femur, I stuck with the five episodes mostly for the pleasure of watching two super actors play powerful women in the world of men. However, I was disappointed enough to need a chaser. After Episode 5, I re-watched a blistering, smart episode of Veep, the one where Serena has a new hair style and her staff goes hilariously into Red Alert. She may only be the Veep, but she travels everywhere in a swarm of agents and advisers—which is way more realistic than what we see in Hostage, a series that did not give the leads a script they deserved. Both actors have tremendous range but were confined by writing that didn’t really treat the audience as intelligent or thoughtful.
Lev Raphael has been reading mysteries and thrillers since junior high school. One of the unexpected joys of reviewing for the Detroit Free Press was being invited to speak on a reviewers panel at a Club Med crime fiction conference in the Caribbean. It was all expenses paid for himself and a plus-one. He first thought the invitation was a very clever new form of phishing.
Yes, some plots do not make much sense. Best wishes! Janet
I am really enjoying this show and have written reviews looking at the world building and plot twists and how they work on my Substack. Take a look