'Hostage's Trend of World Leader Thrillers Should Be Impeached Immediately

In Netflix’s Hostage, Abigail Dalton (Suranne Jones) is eight months into her first term as Prime Minister, and there’s a severe shortage of cancer drugs all across the United Kingdom. As the leader of the opposition tells us in a House of Commons address, she bolstered the flagging National Health Service by diverting funds from defense spending, and her opposition alleges that the British military has been noticeably shrunk by this transfer of wealth. 

This is our first sign that Hostage has no sense of political realism or nuance, even before the miniseries jumps into a ludicrous and mostly tension-free kidnapping plot that cuts to the heart of the British leadership; if a British government suddenly and miraculously increased public funding and cut military spending, surely it would not mean there would be less soldiers – it would just result in less defence contractors and weapons manufacturers receiving lucrative government contracts?

Please, do not fret over the illogical world-building of thriller television and action movies starring elected heads of state. These are not political in any intelligent sense, only in a scandal-brained, ripped-from-the-headlines that suggests intelligence but is about as out of touch with our governments – US and UK alike – as an action movie where we cut away from our brash, grizzled heroes to see the President nodding solemnly to authorize a nuclear launch.

As a result of audiences everywhere engaging with big level electoral politics to a much higher degree (the internet age also makes the bipartisan structure of Western democracies appealing as spectacle, a versus match asking whose rhetoric and image can channel strength and dunk their opponent the best), studios and streamers have en masse agreed that thrillers and relationship dramas about the inhabitants of 10 Downing Street or 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue are a bankable idea. 

Maybe they shoot guns, maybe they have to hunt down a traitor in their ranks, maybe they have to handle a personal crisis without losing face? Already in 2025, Netflix and Amazon have rolled out multiple original films and series featuring friendly, recognisable actors as Presidents and Prime Ministers – Netflix with Hostage, Zero Day, and soon A House of Dynamite, as well as the third season of The Diplomat, and Amazon with G20 and Heads of State. 

(For Anglophile readers, the British Prime Ministers are played by Suranne Jones in Hostage, Rory Kinnear in The Diplomat, Douglas Hodge in G20, and Idris Elba in Heads of State.)

When our own elected officials are callously lurching towards fascism (on both sides of the Atlantic, so nobody’s left out), there is an instinct to feel relieved and aspirational about seeing more capable and level-headed leaders on our screens. This is the desired effect, and it’s a fairly cynical gambit carried out by the creatives and executives behind the projects. In lieu of actual commentary, these streamers aim to portray their political world-building as something inherently more dependable and upright than the real world. 

We love Suranne Jones, we love Idris Elba, and for the United Kingdom to elect non-white, non-male leaders (excluding Margaret Thatcher, every elected PM has been a white man), then the dogmatic, reactionary politics that rule our elections must have softened a little bit. Wouldn’t it be great to live in a world where Jones or Elba were the Prime Minister? Or if Viola Davis or Angela Bassett were the President of the United States?

This is an attempt to conflate an actor’s public persona with the type of political figure that we find most respectable: attractive, charismatic, measured, and deliberate. There’s nothing wrong with this casting philosophy, but the new wave of world leader thrillers is primarily interested in how a newly developed and often violent crisis threatens the image of the President and Prime Minister. 

There is a binary in these shows – you are either a leader of integrity or you are not, and at least in Hostage with Julie Delpy’s French President (who courts the far right by withholding a supply of pharmaceuticals unless French border agents can establish themselves on British soil), a compromised leader is more likely to redeem themselves than a noble leader is to reveal their corruption.

Hostage is not just a fantasy because it gives Britain a likeable leader, but because it suggests the moral compass of a senior politician is fixed and clear enough to be felt by audiences in a suspense thriller. In reality, everyone is beholden to donors, fears of losing popularity, and what will personally profit them. We do not learn the most about our leaders by seeing how they handle a completely unlikely crisis, but by how they treat their citizens when no one is staging violent coups, kidnapping plots, or constitutional conspiracies. 

Netflix and Amazon are tech companies, and are interested in being on favourable terms with any President, including the fascist ones. You won’t see any anti-tech or anti-business politics in these world leader thrillers, just portrayals of Presidents and Prime Ministers that make the streamers look better because they’re imagining a sound, moral vision of how the country should be led. 

It’s limp and trivial stuff, and if they’re going to keep doing it, audiences deserve not to be treated like gullible idiots – we get enough of that in real politics.

All episodes of Hostage are available to stream on Netflix.