Introduction
Bodyguard is a British police-thriller television series created and written by Jed Mercurio and produced by World Productions as part of ITV Studios for the BBC.
The six-part series features Richard Madden and Keeley Hawes, and includes Gina McKee, Sophie Rundle, Vincent Franklin, Pippa Haywood, Paul Ready, Tom Brooke, Nicholas Gleaves, Stuart Bowman, Stephanie Hyam, David Westhead, Matt Stokoe, Nina Toussaint-White, Ash Tandon, and Anjli Mohindra.
Outline
The series is set around the fictional character of Police Sergeant David Budd, a British Army war veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), who is now working for the Royalty and Specialist Protection Branch of London’s Metropolitan Police Service.
He is assigned as the principal protection officer (PPO) for the ambitious Home Secretary Julia Montague, whose politics he despises.
As the series unravels, the series comments on many issues regarding the controversy around government monitoring of private information and its regulation, and also on PTSD.
Trivia
- The series began broadcasting on BBC One on 26 August 2018, achieving the highest viewing figures for a new BBC drama in the multi-channel era and the highest BBC viewing figures since 2008.
- The BBC commissioned the series from the then-independent World Productions in 2016.
- Since ITV Studios Global Entertainment acquired the company in 2017, they have handled international distribution for the series.
- Netflix agreed to a distribution deal to broadcast the show outside the United Kingdom.
- The series was largely filmed on location in London, including the Whittington Estate for Budd’s flat and Battersea for Montague’s flat.
- The bomb scenes in the final episode were filmed around CityPoint near Moorgate and Woburn Square in Bloomsbury.
- The train scenes in the first episode were filmed on the Mid-Norfolk Railway.
- BBC journalists including Andrew Marr, John Pienaar, John Humphrys, and Laura Kuenssberg appear as themselves.
- Viewing figures for the series were high, with 10.4 million (peaking at 11 million) viewers watching the overnight broadcast of the finale live on BBC One alone.
- As significant numbers of viewers watched the show on catchup service iPlayer after transmission, the series sparked a debate on how the media should handle spoilers. For example, Radio Times revealed the fate of Montague in a cover story during the series’ original transmission run.
- A skit titled Red Nose Bodyguard was filmed in support of Comic Relief, featuring many cast members from Series 01 as well as performances from Joanna Lumley, Adrian Dunbar and Sanjeev Bhaskar. The skit was first broadcast on Red Nose Day 2019 on 15 March 2019.
Bodyguard Series
Production & Filming Details
- Creator(s): Jed Mercurio.
- Director(s): Thomas Vincent and John Strickland.
- Producer(s): Simon Heath, Jed Mercurio, Elizabeth Kilgarriff, Priscilla Parish, and Eric Coulter.
- Writer(s): Jed Mercurio.
- Music: Ruth Barrett and Ruskin Williamson.
- Cinematography: John Lee.
- Editor(s): Steve Singleton and Andrew John McClelland.
- Production: World Productions.
- Distributor(s): ITV Studios Global Entertainment.
- Original Network: BBC One.
- Release Date: 26 August 2018 to 23 September 2018.
- Running Time: 60 minutes.
- Country: UK.
- Language: English.
Military Gogglebox 
Leave a comment