There’s lots of plot to keep you engaged in Prime Video’s exclusive thriller The Widow, says Dan Slevin.
Kate Beckinsale on the warpath in Episode 4 of The Widow. Photo: Prime Video (photo by Coco Van Oppens)
Shots were fired recently in the local streaming wars with American behemoth Amazon Prime Video offering 12 months free membership to customers of 2 Degrees broadband. This bears comparison with the deal that Spark customers get with Lightbox (in fact, it may even be better as Lightbox only offers rental movies but Prime Video currently has a non-trivial number of feature films to stream including all the ones that they have produced themselves).
Thriller series The Widow is a good introduction to the Prime: eight episodes, each one ending on a cliffhanger, featuring exotic international locations and a strong cast of known and lesser-known faces.
Action star Kate Beckinsale (the Underworld franchise) is the lead. She plays Georgia, a recently widowed former Captain in the British Army, tending her emotional wounds at her family’s cottage in the Welsh mountains. Her husband Will was an aid worker who died in a plane crash in the Democratic Republic of Congo so imagine her surprise when she she sees him on television, during the coverage of a riot in the DRC’s capital of Kinshasa.
Photo: Amazon
Against the advice of family friend (and former Military Intelligence chief) Charles Dance, she hops on a plane to investigate. Once there, the clues and the questions start piling up as she meets up with local journalist Emmanuel (Jacky Ido) to track down the mysterious South African mercenary Pieter Bello (Bart Fouche) who has shown up too many times in this story to be a coincidence.
There’s an awful lot of plot in The Widow which is good because that is the show’s strength. If you like twists, cliffhangers and action, I think you will enjoy it.
At least up until the final episode which felt like an episode too long – that’s when all the loose ends are tied up and Ms Beckinsale’s character goes into full-on ‘white saviour’ mode. My companion and I felt it had already been resolved to our satisfaction and thought we were done for the night.
The Widow is streaming on Amazon’s Prime Video service and is rated 16+ according to their own guidance.
