Link to the n*de dudes
Scene 1: Austria. A group of people dancing and hetero-flirting outside in the snow. A sniper zooms on on Oleg (Pavel Konstantyn, n*de on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends). Her handler tells her to take the shot, but she refuses. Instead, she skiis down and stabs him, then skiis away with Russians in hot pursuit. She crashes or eludes them, and takes off her mask: It's Judith (Hannah Waddingham)!
Scene 2: At the chalet that night. People dancing, drinking, and hetero-flirting. Judith wins the hammering-a-nail-while-drunk contest, then asks Hans the Bartender (Taylor Napier) for another drink "or nine."
When he gets off work, they bounce and crash into her hotel room to smoochify. Darn, I thought she was a lesbian. Nice chest shot of the Bartender as Judith is slowly getting ready.
She gets up in the early morning hours. "So, can I call you?"
"Scoff, scoff. Absolutely not!" So he's not an ongoing character, just there to identify Judith as not gay?.
"Who the f*ck are you?" He asks as she walks away.
Good question, she ponders. Her passport says that she's a forensic accountant, but that's just a boring cover to avoid follow-up questions. She's actually an assassin.
Scene 3: London. A closeup of a woman's wedding ring (hetero identity established immediately) as she drives, listening to a true crime podcast. She inches her way into a parking space, but now she's blocked in,so she has to climb out through the window. It's Debbie (Octavia Spencer)!
Assassin Judith calls, pretending that she was at an accounting conference, but she'll be back in time for Book Club, and pick her up an apothecary cabinet at the Antique Warehouse.
It's like Black Friday in the U.S., crowds jostling and running over each other to get in. Real-life celebrity antique dealer Drew Pritchard and his boyfriend rush toward the apothecary cabinet, but Debbie beat them to it! They fume with jealousy. Wait -- the real-life guy is straight. They just gave him a boyfriend on the show to queerbait.
"Who the heck is that?" The Boyfriend asks. I agree. What does this scene have to do with anything?
Debbie ponders it. I made law review at Yale, fell in love, moved to England. I have two grown children. My husband is David Claybourne, Member of Parliament, who will be the next Prime Minister. But I have a secret -- one that would tear my life apart. Are you and Judith secretly girlfriends? No, it's Book Club tomorrow,a nd she hasn't read the book, har har.
Scene 4: London. Assassin Judith arrives at a fancy restaurant for lunch with Sam (Calam Lynch), her Handler, who demands to know why she stabbed the last mark instead of shooting him, resulting in 100 witnesses.
"You used to follow the rules, but now every case turns into chaos. You're acting out, getting sloppy, and putting us all in danger." He gives her another assignment, but "no mistakes, or you're gone."
The Mark is the hunky Billy Donovan (Ed Skrein), a crime boss. It's to be done at the Water Relief Gala, the charity that Billy launders his money through.
"And poison him. No high tech gadgets."
Scene 5: At home, the MP (Jamie Parker) is upset because the Book Club is all ladies, giggling and carrying on in a gender-stereotyped fashion, and because Debbie bought too much junk at the Antiques Fair. But she assuages him by cooking him dinner and offering to go over his speech.
Tomorrow he's meeting a client at a charity event. Uh-oh. Debbie insists on going with him. "But it's business, not political." "I don't care, I'm going." He snorts "Fine!" and stomps out. Why don't you want her there? Is something sinister going on? Isn't that the same meeting where Judith's hit is?
Judith enters with wine. They discuss the book, ladies with weird hair, Debbie living in her husband's shadow, and makeup, while a mysterious figure watches from outside the window.
Scene 6: In the morning, Debbie heads to Parliament to give the Railroad Chairman (Ben Bradshaw) a Zambian terracotta pig that she bought at the antique place yesterday. "And by the way, could you sign the Transport Bill?" Bribing the old guy, har har.
Meanwhile, Assassin Judith heads to a shop called Williams and Daughter, where she gets her fake ids, guns, knives, crossbows, and high-tech gadgets. But today she just needs some poison, two vials to hide in her shoe.
After Judith leaves, Daughter calls Handler Sam, flirts with him, and reports that she bought 220 miligrams of aconite. (wolfsbane). Dang, I was hoping that he would be gay.
More after the break
Scene 7: Night. On the drive to the party, the MP gets a call from a family lawyer. Debbie wants to know why.
"Um...I, er...um...want a divorce." Telling her in the car on the way to a party? You cad! "I didn't want to tell you this way. I wanted to wait until after the election, when I was Prime Minister."
They arrive at the party site. "Chin up, don't make a scene, and all that."
Assassin Judith suveilles the Mark's room, and zeroes in on his shoes for some reason. She also can see him showering, and is impressed by his package.
Left: The Mark.
Next she makes a grand entrance and is greeted by longing looks from the men and anger from the women. She watches the Mark schmoozing, and accidentally knocks her purse off the table, resulting in a meet-cute. I'm not sure if this is the Mark or someone else. He dissolves into a slurry of hormones, and she starts fanning herself, unbearably turned on.
Meanwhile, Debbie orders a dozen tequilas from the cute bartender (Kampam Soni) and complains that she is responsible for the MP's success. She writes all of his speeches and does all of his schmoozing. He's nothing without her!
Scene 8: Judith applies lipstick to her bosom for some reason, and then sneaks into a room. I can't tell if it's the Mark's room or not. But there are four guys in there already, not entirely alive! One is holding an old post card with the line "Miss me? DC XX." Another is the MP, Debbie's husband!
She calls the Handler; "Code red! Full extraction!"
She overhears the bad guys saying that they want to get rid of Debbie, too, so she rushes down to the party and grabs her,. I fast-forward through the last fifteen minutes: it's just the two escaping.
My Grade: I was annoyed by this series. I can understand the absence of gay characters -- a lot of series act like they don't exist. But why include a scene that's irrelevant to the story, just to demonstrate that Judith is straight? nd why the queerbaiting guys at the antique warehouse? They are not just omitting gay characters, they're taunting gay viewers. "Hah, hah, you thought you existed, but you don't!"
I had some space left over, so I researched Kampan Soni, who plays the cute bartender that Debbie complains to.
Kampan grew up in Ahmendabad, Gujarat, and graduated from St. Xavier High School in 2018. For uni, he chose the Czech University of Life Sciences in Prague, where he received a B.Sci. in Agriculture and Food Sciences in 2022. He is currently a Global Mobility Specialist at Amazon Prague, which means working in Human Resources.
There are two n*de photos on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends.
His only acting role besides Ride or Die is eight 2024 episodes of the comedy To se vysvětlí soudruzi! (That will be explained, Comrades!). During the Communist era, his paranormal investigator Shushrut faces a man frozen in an ice cube, a villainous puppet, a decadent Western superhero, a ghost that shoots lightning bolts, a monster who attacks anyone who doesn't sing, and other X-Files-type beasties.
Gay actor Jan Cina played his co-worker at the Paranoormal Institute.
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