How Can Something This Bad Be So Good?

I did not like the first episode of Prime Video’s new series Ride or Die. It’s shot like a bad beer commercial and features every spy-movie trope in existence. I figured we were looking at another generic Citadel and wondered what the hell Hannah Waddingham and Octavia Spencer had gotten themselves into.

But I stuck with it anyway, and you know what? It is another fairly generic, Prime Video-coded action adventure running the same True Lies blueprint as every other spy series these days (including the True Lies reboot) — and yet the charm and genuine chemistry between Waddingham and Spencer eventually won me over. It’s not a great show, but it is a great pairing, and the dopeyness and the brightly lit action sequences end up being part of the charm rather than a mark against it.

Waddingham plays Judith, an assassin approaching 50 and bored enough with the job that she goes rogue now and then just to keep things interesting. She works for a shadowy off-the-books organization that wants to retire her but grants her one last kill: a guy named Billy Donovan (Ed Skrein), who has some vague ties to the Albanian mob.

Spencer plays Debbie, a brilliant lawyer turned housewife who has spent years propping up her boring husband, David, for an eventual run at Prime Minister. Debbie and Judith are best friends, but Debbie has no idea what Judith does for a living.

Things take a turn when it emerges that David stole £24 million from the Albanian mob, which drops him right into Billy Donovan’s orbit. You know how this goes: Judith is planning her hit on Billy, Debbie winds up at a sit-down with the mob, Judith has to save her, Debbie learns her best friend is an assassin, Debbie doesn’t trust her — but also, Judith just saved her life — and the plot unspools from there.

There’s one particularly sticky wrinkle: another assassin named Ana, who works for the same outfit. Ana and Judith used to be best friends too, until Judith had to kill her because Ana is a sociopath. Except Ana didn’t die. She was just left for dead by the person she trusted most. So while everyone else is chasing the £24 million, Ana is chasing revenge — and revenge here doesn’t just mean killing Judith, it means blowing up her friendship with Debbie.

Bill Nighy turns up as the Director of the shadowy organization, and there’s the usual scattering of supporting characters and love interests to pad the eight-episode run.

On paper, Ride or Die isn’t much. On camera, it frequently isn’t either. Peyton Reed (Ant-Man) directs the first two episodes and sets the tone with his brand of brightly lit, cartoonish action, while writer/creator Tessa Coates often feels like she’s working from an AI blueprint for a Prime Video spy series.

And yet Spencer and Waddingham elevate the crap out of it. It’s not just that they’re funny and charming together; there’s real emotional heft to the friendship. For all the lunacy around them, you buy that these two women would actually be each other’s ride or die — and that conviction is contagious, lending a little credibility even to the cookie-cutter characters orbiting them. For a show I really didn’t want to like, the sheer force of Waddingham and Spencer refused me permission.