Hello everyone, recently a series was released on Netflix named Hostages, which I have watched and completed. It has only five episodes, and the length of each episode is kept under one hour. You can easily complete this series in five hours. But let’s talk about whether you should watch it or not.
https://youtu.be/q20_wbeiVG8?si=_mRvSM4G3MoFIrez
Basic Story
First, let’s discuss the basic story. What kind of story will you get to see? The story revolves around the United Kingdom’s Prime Minister. There, the Prime Minister is the most powerful, just like in India. Their husband gets kidnapped when he goes to treat the poor, and he is taken from there.
Now, the demand being made from the Prime Minister is that if you want your husband alive, you have to resign from your post. And she does not want to resign. And how the President of France gets involved in this. All these things you have to see in the series: what is their motive? Why did they kidnap him, and why are they demanding her resignation?
Talking about the series’ story, I have seen many stories like this. Only the characters change slightly. Sometimes the President’s son is kidnapped. Sometimes the President’s wife is kidnapped. But here, the Prime Minister’s husband has been kidnapped. So, all these things feel the same. And the motive behind why they have kidnapped the Prime Minister’s husband could have been shown in a much better way, with bigger things portrayed. But I think they didn’t have much in terms of the story.
Because of this, the story felt very engaging to me. On top of that, they must have thought not to make the series too long. That’s why they kept the series to just five episodes. But even five episodes felt too much to me. It was difficult to stay interested in the series because the things seemed repetitive and familiar, and the series didn’t feel interesting to watch from any angle.
I mean, if you haven’t watched any series like this before, then maybe you might find it interesting. But if you have watched series like this, it will be quite difficult to stay interested. On the other hand, Korean series create interest immediately, or if it’s a good series, it hooks you right away. But this series is just okay. It doesn’t create much interest.
Acting & Performance
Everyone’s performance is quite good, but I felt a bit of a lack in the production budget. Now, it could be that this is how it is in reality. The way the Prime Minister’s security and other people’s security are shown, the locations shown don’t feel very rich. It feels like they had a limited budget. That’s why things were shown on a small scale.
If a series is being made and it involves the Prime Minister or President, things are shown on a grand scale. The headquarters would be huge, massive. The Prime Minister’s security would be massive. There would be a lot of guards. The Ministers’ guards would be numerous. But here, things have been shown very normal, minimalistic.
It could be that this is how it actually is in the UK, I can’t say anything about that. But still, production-wise, it didn’t feel like much to me. On top of that, we don’t get emotionally attached to any character. Forget the Prime Minister’s husband; even if the Prime Minister dies, it wouldn’t make any difference to us.
So, this is an okay series. There’s nothing extraordinary about it. If you haven’t watched any series like this yet, you can watch it. But if you have seen other series like this, stay away from this one because, even though it’s only a five-hour series with just five episodes, it still feels quite heavy. Watching it requires a lot of effort because the series doesn’t hook you from anywhere.
I would rate this series 6.5 out of 10, which for me is an okay series. And this series is available in the Hindi language. There are no adult or nude scenes in it, but you still can’t watch it with family because some things come up that make it unsuitable. Otherwise, there are no such scenes in it. But still, don’t watch it with family.