Hostage is a political thriller, and observes the conventions in many ways. The pace is absolutely flawless, it’s twisty, it has emotional heft. The British prime minister, Abigail Dalton, played by Suranne Jones, faces her husband, Alex Anderson (Ashley Thomas), being kidnapped. Their marriage is well drawn – “it’s happy, it’s assured, they’re supportive of each other,” Jones says. As we chat in Netflix’s central London offices, she’s always saying five things at once, only one of them out loud. Here, the subtext (I’ve decided) is: it’s actually pretty skilled work, creating a not-schmaltzy, passionate but familiar love match in which all the audience’s hopes and prayers are with the abducted spouse. That’s why normally when fictional politicians are the victims of a family kidnapping, it’s one of their kids.
Meanwhile, the French president, Julie Delpy’s Vivienne Toussaint, is also in Britain, is also being blackmailed, and has her own dilemmas: principally, does she go over to the dark side, by echoing the far right on anti-immigrant narratives, or stick to her principles, whatever those may still be. Delpy is hilarious on this, and actually most things. “That’s something I found interesting in the show. Sometimes I wonder, I truly wonder, is there any politician who really has a conscience? I look at Macron – I cannot believe someone with a conscience wouldn’t be questioning themselves, questioning who they have picked [as a cabinet], questioning what’s going on with French politics.” “You really wonder whether any politician has a conscience?” I ask, just to be clear. “Well, yes.”
