Three questions hang over episode three of Jed Mercurio’s Bodyguard. Firstly: how much of a monster really is Home Secretary Julia Montague and how much did she know? Secondly: are we seriously going to have a terrorist attack in every episode? Bit exhausting isn't it? Lastly: who really is David Budd and whose side is he on?
This London is more vulnerable and extreme than our own. It's bad in the UK, but come on, the Home Secretary doesn't experience an assassination attempt every time she leaves the house.
The continual attempts on the lives of our two protagonists, Julia Monatague (Keeley Hawes) and David Budd (Richard Madden), are a product of the the refusal by Line of Duty writer and Bodyguard creator to let up on the tension.
The air is thick with drama, as well as gunpowder, and episode three is as an invigorating a watch as the previous two episodes – not an ideal pre-bed routine nine on a Sunday night we grant you.
Alongside the wait for someone to get blown to smithereens, we're on the edge of our seat with no sense of who Budd and Montague really are – and indeed how they actually feel about one another.
Our traumatised bodyguard David Budd gives us a dead-eyed stare, even as he's slipping between the Home Secretary's sheets. He still responds to the Home Secretary with his hard-nosed ‘yes ma’am, no ma’am’s – but now these sharp little answers are reserved for when the two of them are in public together.
The unlikely couple have taken to whispering sort-of-sweet nothings in one another’s ears (‘I know you won’t let anything bad happen to me’ isn't the most enticing come-on in the world, but we'll allow it), and sneaking into one another’s rooms.
Anne Sampson (Gina McKee) has sweet-talked Budd into spying on the sinister comings and goings of the Home Secretary's companions and hushed conversations. Budd reveals some, but not everything of what's going on – to us and to Sampson – leaving us unsure of where his loyalties lie.
Julia Montague has secrets of her own, but neither we nor Budd have overheard enough to know exactly what they are. It's all so nerve-wracking. And of course, after an hour of simmering emotions, blank faces and complicated feelings, it all ends with a bang.
You might not like feeling under assault every time you turn on the TV on a Sunday night, but it's impossible not to await next Sunday with anything other than bated breath, as Mercurio's places our protagonists in the eye of various storms but reveals nothing of how either Budd or Montague actually feel whilst there. Just make sure you have an ovaltine on hand to calm down with, afterwards.
Bodyguard airs BBC One 9pm Sunday nights
| What | Bodyguard BBC One, episode three review |
| Where | BBC One, BBC One | MAP |
| When |
On 02 Sep 18, 9:00 PM – 10:00 PM |
| Price | £n/a |
| Website |
