If real-life politics fills you with despair, try diving into one of these tense thrillers. Packed with plot twists, power struggles and political scandals, these bingeworthy shows will have you hooked from the start. Here are our top picks.
Hostage
Suranne Jones stars as the "no-nonsense" newly elected prime minister in this "globetrotting" political thriller, said Lucy Mangan in The Guardian. When her husband, a doctor working to distribute vaccinations in French Guiana, is kidnapped by "unknown terrorists", she must try to save him while managing a national emergency. It's a "rollicking, propulsive and compulsive yarn", and Jones is "terrific" as an "everywoman in extraordinary circumstances". While I sometimes find myself wishing she would "treat herself and us to a comedy", when television is "this much fast, furious, intelligent fun, I suppose we shouldn't ask for more".
Netflix
Paradise
Many TV shows struggle to make an impression but occasionally "one comes along that has such a striking opening episode that there is no doubt you'll be watching until the big finale", said Jacob Stolworthy in The Independent. Enter "Paradise": an "intriguing mystery" delving into the murder of President Cal Bradford (James Marsden). Secret Service agent Xavier Collins (Sterling K. Brown) was the last person to see him alive and quickly becomes the prime suspect; he must attempt to prove his innocence while tracking down the real culprit. What first appears as a "run-of-the-mill espionage thriller" soon unfurls into something far more interesting. It's a must-watch.
Disney+
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Zero Day
A cyberattack strikes the US for one minute, causing widespread devastation in this "handsomely made" political thriller, said Sophie Butcher in Empire. "Cars crash, planes fall, hospital equipment fails." It's a catastrophic event on an "unprecedented scale" which brings former president George Mullen (Robert De Niro) out of retirement to track down the perpetrators by "any means necessary". The pace slackens around the halfway mark but "once the truth starts unravelling, the show kicks back up a notch and the last two instalments are truly nail-biting".
Netflix
The Night Agent
This gripping political thriller became the most watched show on Netflix in 2023. Peter Sutherland (Gabriel Basso), a lowly FBI agent, was tasked with manning an emergency phone line that never rang in the basement of the White House. But one day it did, thrusting him into a deadly conspiracy. The second instalment picks up with the "newly promoted" leading man, who is now a fully fledged member of the "top secret" Night Action team, said Tilly Pearce in The i Paper. Netflix isn't trying to "reinvent the wheel" here, but with its "slick visuals, fast pacing and heart-stopping shoot-outs, it really doesn't have to".
Netflix
The Diplomat
The first season of this "political-thriller-cum-marital-dramedy" was an "unexpected pleasure", said Richard Lawson in Vanity Fair. It followed Kate Wyler (Keri Russell), a US diplomat juggling her new job as ambassador to the UK with her turbulent marriage to a political star. Season two is just as successful, satisfying a "perhaps previously unknown itch for something higher-grade than mere streaming chum, but not so demanding as a dense, cerebral, premium-cable series". The action charts the fallout from series one's "shocking bombing", with Wyler and her team working tirelessly to "try to uncover the nefarious forces behind the attack". Hovering over the second season is the question: "what cost are we willing to pay, how much principle and decency will we barter away, in pursuit of security (imagined or not)?"
Netflix
Say Nothing
This absorbing adaptation of Patrick Radden Keefe's non-fiction book of the same name "excels" at telling a good story, said Benji Wilson in The Telegraph. The nine-part drama sketches a "complex and devastating portrait" of Northern Ireland during the Troubles, that "spans four decades of murder and betrayal". While the early episodes have a "needling sense" the conflict is being romanticised, the series "soon develops into something more elegiac and profound". It's well worth watching the whole way through.
Disney+
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