Among the most intense of thrillers on Netflix, with no gratuitous violence - The Bodyguard

The BBC One six-part series, Jed Mercurio's The Bodyguard (Season 1) is about as intense and compelling as any short series that's come across from Netflix in the past several years, ranking alongside Fauda I would say: a tense and tight plot with many strands and many surprising twists and a few of the most tense scenes ever involving suicide bombs and assassination attempts. The entire cast, led by Richard Madden as a special agent in the UK counterpart to the U.S. Secret Service, assigned to cover and protect the Home Secretary Keeley Hawes) , an extremely controversial figure because of her support for the war in Afghanistan and because she's a potential rival to the PM. Somehow the team of creators manages to tie in many themes and they all cohere and make sense: terrorists from radical Islam, the criminal underworld in London, turf rivalries among the various police and protective services, political rivalries between various ministers and members of Parliament, PTSD among war veterans, intra-office rivalries among various aides and underlings, family drama, and top-secret love affairs involving some of the principals - and maybe more. To be honest, some of the plot twists are hard to follow, at least for an American viewer, as some knowledge of the UK cabinet and protective agencies is presumed - and the variety of accents is a challenge as well (In the final episode, we resorted to closed caption, which did help), but you always get the drift of the story line and the key points and issues, many of which remain open mysteries until the conclusion. The tension in the first and final episodes is almost unbearable - and to its credit this series, unlike so many other European dramas that have made their way to Netflix, does not try to be sensational or shocking through use of gore, mayhem, gruesome injuries, or gratuitous violence. It's a narrative driven by plot and character, and definitely should be on the must-see list; and, yes, the door is left slightly open for a Season 2.