{"id":708263,"date":"2026-07-24T04:49:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T04:49:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/708263\/"},"modified":"2026-07-24T04:49:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T04:49:11","slug":"ride-or-die-review-prime-videos-spy-caper-is-not-so-slick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/708263\/","title":{"rendered":"Ride Or Die review \u2014 Prime Video’s spy caper is not so slick"},"content":{"rendered":"

Debbie Claybourne (Octavia Spencer) has no idea her best friend Judith Barton (Hannah Waddingham) secretly works as a contract killer. When the truth suddenly comes out, the pair get caught up in a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse across Europe.<\/p>\n

Streaming on: Prime Video<\/p>\n

Episodes viewed: 8 of 8<\/p>\n

As the hunt for\u202fa new James Bond continues<\/a>, Hannah Waddingham\u00a0has made a solid\u00a0case for\u202fwidening the net beyond the usual suspects. Within the first hour of\u00a0action-comedy series\u202fRide\u202fOr\u202fDie, her\u00a0character\u00a0Judith proves herself more than capable of filling 007\u2019s shoes,\u00a0her\u00a0high heels\u00a0quickly\u00a0swapped\u00a0for\u00a0Spy-Who-Loved Me<\/a>-esque\u00a0skis.\u00a0That\u2019s\u00a0before you even consider the\u00a0high-speed chase\u201a\u202for\u202fthe high-speed way she celebrates a mission accomplished with some totty\u00a0on the side.\u00a0But the show\u2019s\u00a0creator\u202fTessa Coates\u00a0seems\u00a0less concerned with\u00a0making generic action\u00a0than she is with\u00a0exploring female friendship.<\/p>\n

\"Ride<\/p>\n

While\u00a0there might have been a temptation to push\u00a0Judith\u2019s bestie into a hapless civilian role, it turns out Debbie\u00a0(Octavia Spencer)\u00a0is\u00a0actually the\u00a0stronger\u00a0half\u00a0of this\u00a0particular double-act, emotionally speaking\u00a0at least. Underestimate her at your\u00a0peril, because\u00a0Spencer\u2019s character is just as\u00a0capable\u00a0as\u00a0Waddingham\u2019s\u00a0highly\u00a0trained\u00a0assassin.\u00a0As it turns out,\u00a0it\u2019s\u00a0not\u00a0the action that pulls you in\u00a0so\u00a0much as the chemistry between the two leads. With actors as accomplished\u00a0and as charismatic\u00a0as Waddingham and Spencer,\u00a0it feels entirely plausible\u00a0that this pair have been friends for\u202f20 years, which becomes key when obstacles threaten to derail that connection.<\/p>\n

Inevitably,\u00a0Thelma\u00a0&\u00a0Louise<\/a>\u00a0comparisons come to mind\u00a0when\u00a0watching\u202fthis show\u00a0\u2014 telling, perhaps,\u00a0because\u00a0there simply\u00a0haven\u2019t\u00a0been enough\u00a0on-screen\u00a0female pairings in this vein. The adventure\u00a0that\u00a0Judith and Debbie take\u00a0certainly\u00a0impresses more than\u00a0recent\u00a0big-screen alternatives like\u00a0The Heat<\/a>\u202for\u202fThe Spy Who Dumped Me<\/a>, yet it\u2019s hard not to imagine how much better the series might have been had the story been condensed into a feature-length runtime. Supporting actors like Ed Skrein, Bill Nighy and Sylvia\u00a0Hoeks\u00a0\u2014\u00a0who\u00a0each\u00a0play\u00a0unhinged killers\u00a0\u2014\u00a0add character to this world, but their involvement also piles on more subplots, resulting in a show that feels overstuffed,\u00a0rather than\u00a0the\u00a0slick spy caper\u00a0it clearly wants to be.<\/p>\n

Ride\u202fOr\u202fDie\u202fisn\u2019t quite the action vehicle Waddingham and Spencer deserve, but they both excel regardless, hitting the thrills and comedic beats with formidable and charismatic tenacity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Debbie Claybourne (Octavia Spencer) has no idea her best friend Judith Barton (Hannah Waddingham) secretly works as a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":708264,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-708263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=708263"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708263\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/708264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=708263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=708263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=708263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}