RIYADH: There’s much to enjoy about “Hostage.” Not least that its makers have been wise enough to keep it to a taught, tense five episodes.
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Suranne Jones plays Abigail Dalton, the UK prime minister who finds herself in the middle of a nationwide cancer-drug shortage crippling the National Health Service she promised to fix on the campaign trail. To attempt to do this she has had to “gut” military spending.
To get the urgently needed drugs, she needs the help of president Vivienne Toussaint (a regally icy Julie Delpy), who — following the guidance of her slimy media mogul husband — has apparently abandoned her once tightly held principles and embraced populism in order to gain power. It’s a make-or-break summit for Dalton.
However, before she can even open negotiations, she receives a video informing her that her husband Alex — a doctor with Médecins Sans Frontières (i.e. a Good Man) — has been kidnapped while working in French Guiana. His abductors are demanding that Dalton resign. What to do? Well, if only she hadn’t gutted the UK military, perhaps she could launch a rescue mission, but now she’ll need Toussaint’s help. Just when it seems like she’s going to get it, Toussaint receives a video on her phone — an extremely private, extremely compromising video. Abort the rescue mission, she’s told, or the video goes public.
