Prisoner Review – Kapow! Boom! Shooty-shooty! What Stupid Fun This Is
Tahar Rahim and Izuka Hoyle star as a prison guard and a contract killer handcuffed together and on the run from a ruthless crime syndicate. The series is undeniably silly but undeniably entertaining.
Prisoner is, quite frankly, stupid. It’s fun, but undeniably stupid. If this new six-part action thriller about a prisoner and his escorting guard handcuffed together and fleeing danger were a person, you might think: "Cor, they’re stupid, but unchallenging and pleasant enough company. Maybe I’ll stick around. Maybe I won’t." That sums up the tone perfectly.
The setup is straightforward. We first meet the prison guard Amber (Izuka Hoyle, who is too talented for the material but is young and promising, so no harm done) as she says goodbye to her baby and leaves him with stay-at-home dad Olly (Finn Bennett, who has appeared in some quality work and should pursue more of it) before rejoining her prison guarding team after six months’ maternity leave.
As one might not do on their first day back after six months off, Amber volunteers for an extra overtime job. She and a colleague are sent to pick up a special prisoner who must be transported overnight from an isolated location to the Old Bailey. To make it clear that trouble is imminent, she places a family photo on the van’s windscreen shade.
Meanwhile, viewers repeatedly learn from a group of men in white shirts and one woman — whose entire character description seems to be "Hardbitten divorcee. Takes no prisoners" (a pun apparently unnoticed by the writer) — that the stakes are high. The men are led by Alex (played inexplicably by respected actor Eddie Marsan) and the woman, Josephine (played equally inexplicably by equally respected actor Catherine McCormack), is their boss. Together, they form the national Crime Unit, which has spent the last seven years trying to bring down the head of the Pegasus Crime Syndicate, Harrison Dempsey (Brían F O’Byrne), who commands a convincing presence amid the escalating chaos.
Dempsey’s trial on charges of being a total villain has begun. Its success, as is typical in trials of criminal conglomerate bosses, depends entirely on the testimony of one man: Tibor Stone (Tahar Rahim). Stone was a prolific contract killer for Dempsey, with "47 confirmed kills," as Alex states. Alex also says,
"And those are just the ones we know about."To which the reviewer responds,
"Wait. Do you mean, there are other confirmed kills you don’t know about? In which case, what is your definition of ‘confirmed’ here? Have you just said the same thing twice? Don’t you tell me not to be pedantic! You write proper instead! Tcch!"Stone also suffers from Type 3 diabetes, requiring insulin shots whenever the plot demands more jeopardy.
Of course, Amber currently has Stone in the back of her van, the same van with the family photo on the windscreen shade. And, oh dear, what’s this? An ambush? While the men of the NCU keep reminding viewers that if Stone doesn’t arrive, Dempsey will go free and their investigation will have been for nothing, the ambush unfolds.
Kapow! Boom! Shooty-shooty! The van is overturned! The armed escort is outnumbered and outgunned (there’s even a 3D printer weaponry warehouse operating elsewhere). Amber scrambles to free Stone from the van’s cage and handcuffs them together to prevent his escape. Oh Amber, you noble fool! A character named Nina (Leonie Benesch), a splinter of Tilda Swinton, is on their trail and pursues them for much of the series.
From here, the show becomes a growing series of set-piece action scenes, insulin shots administered under increasingly unlikely circumstances, an arrogant heir to Dempsey interfering, wounds patched without anaesthetic, Amber questioning how far she will compromise her ethics to protect a bad man (and who is a bad man anyway? Getting deep, man), suspected moles within the NCU (
"This is going to cost you everything!"), and an unusually high number of weak performances unable to elevate an already poor script.
Despite these flaws, the series looks slick. Who has the energy to care all the time about characters, logic, or why a man would run over the panes of a glass roof instead of the joists in between? It’s an action thriller that compresses the basics — see “Kapow! Boom!” above — but neglects the details. It earns two and a half stars, though the half star fell into one of the plot holes and cannot be saved.
