'Ride or Die' Series Review: This Action-Comedy Romp Carves its Niches In The Espionage Genre
headlined by the duo of octavia spencer and hannah waddingham, ‘ride or die’ adds some fun new dynamics to a trite subgenre, but isn’t without its drawbacks.
Few genres have seen such a boom in the streaming era as espionage. It feels like every streamer has some, if not multiple variations of a espionage series, with predominant focuses on more archetypal plots concerning government agencies with A-List actors in leading roles. Ride or Die, on paper, seems like another one of these entries, an espionage series with a ‘high-concept,’ a comedic undertone and some real star power, and yet, it is able to find its own identity, one of levity and tonal nuance, inside a genre that very often gets bogged down by hyper-realism and self-seriousness. The series, created by multi-hyphenate Tessa Coates, follows a pair of lifelong best friends, lawyer and parliamentary wife Debbie Claybourne (Octavia Spencer) and Judith Burtone (Hannah Waddingham), a renowned assassin whose secret identity is inadvertently revealed to Debbie, which sends a major shock to the duo’s friendship, with their lives then being upended, forced to go on the run together, now entangled in a global conspiracy full of danger, laughs, and (re)defining friendship moments.
It’s hard not to imagine unanimous praise for the series’ leads, who are both formidable and well-recognized performers in their own right, and the show is best when it’s serving as a star vehicle for Butler and Waddingham’s natural chemistry. The series itself mostly understands this, but fully understands its rarity as a genre-centered show starring two women in their 50’s, also reflected as a major recurring theme in the show, grounding the show in something tangible and interesting, even amidst its more campy and even formulaic moments. Though there is humour inherent in the show’s purposefully unconventional pairing, credit must be given to the creative team for never making their leads the butt of the joke in any trite or reductionist manner, and for the series’ tonal placement as well. Fish out of water, this is not, rather a mildly amusing ‘partnered potato sack race’ kind of comedic show, and retains the slightly amusing nature with a sense of objective at hand.
While I am mostly a fan of the genre, it doesn’t feel blasphemous to say that the modern iterations of ‘action-comedy’ projects represent a nadir in terms of tonal balance, often leaning too hard into forced and redundant humour or weightless action, a contrast from the almost parodical self-seriousness that bogs down a great number of streaming espionage series (coughs in Jack Ryan). Ride or Die takes a more tonally irreverent approach that feels less like a methodical balancing act than it does an understanding of the genre’s tropes and pulpy origins. Ride or Die’s word of assassins isn’t completely grim, but isn’t completely developed either. This isn’t to say that every assassin project needs the expansiveness of say, the John Wick world’s rules and lore, but the series is admittedly at its most generic when it centers subplots around other assassin-related characters whose arcs feel tangential, and often disposable.
There is some intrigue to be found in the initial conspiracy plot concerning Debbie’s MP husband David (Jamie Parker), especially given Debbie’s positioning as the driving force for her husband and his political affairs, also putting the fastidious Debbie (and subsequently dependable Spencer) on the back foot in a second major way. Yet, this dynamic gets upended with more focus on the aforementioned tangential subplots, one of which follows Sylvia Hoeks in an incredibly tropey ‘female orphan trained to be spy/assassin’ part, which gains more and more narrative prominence as the series goes on, and makes for diminishing returns, as the series becomes more conventional.
Outside of the nuances brought about by the leads and their character dynamics, Ride or Die shows moments of strength when it’s able to play up the aforementioned levity, and gives itself some room to breathe amidst its globe-trotting thriller trappings. It’s way easier to get invested in Octavia Spencer developing fake aliases on the fly in the classic European train setting than it is a generic action sequence or redundant visual callback. Another way the series is successful in this way is getting the woefully underrated Ed Skrein involved, and having him play against type. Skrein is so often typecast in ‘British villain with an edge’ kind of parts, or villainous parts in general. Ride or Die lets Skrein flex his comedic chops (see the equally underrated I Used To Be Famous for reference), and adds another level of intrigue by virtue of this choice, which ultimately pays off.
In a time where the mere idea of a Skydance production (let alone an espionage series) is bound to invite both moral and narrative concern, having something as refreshingly no-frills as Ride or Die come along is a small treat in of itself. Despite getting bogged down with some genre cliches and the unfortunate need to make an eight episode quota, the show mostly manages to accomplish its goals with its sense of levity intact. The series will likely make for an enjoyable enough watch for most, with its enduring friendship themes and unique dynamics all gliding by with a comparatively passing grade thanks to the undeniable chemistry from its powerhouse leads, which, again, is enough of a reason to justify this series’ spot in an already homogenizing genre.