Bodyguard blokes

Finally, a scene I could thoroughly enjoy after the disappointing demise of Julia Montague in "Bodyguard". Without the interplay between Keeley Hawes and the titular bodyguard  David Budd (Richard Madden), there was hardly anything that rang true in episodes four to six until the scene where Budd, his boss Deepak Sharma and Expo expert Daniel Chung work together to defuse the bomb strapped to Budd's manly torso. Finally, blokes being blokes! And not a woman in sight! Finally, men being the best of what they can be, relying on each other and uttering things like "a man whose word is his bond"! This triggered an actual physical release of tension in me, humble viewer, catching up on iPlayer the day after the finale. "Bodyguard" has been irritating from the start in its insistence on casting women in every possible traditionally male occupation or career. Montague herself was compelling and played by Hawes with great aplomb, but the other high-ranking women, Craddock and Sampson, were unbelievable and terribly dull. The character of Anne Sampson was especially tedious, as portrayed with a bored drawl and an expression of permanent lemon-sucking distaste by Gina McKee, an otherwise good actress, I think, who was presumably either miscast or misdirected. Worse, most of the main women, from top brass to Budd's wife Vicky, were laden with the same huge blotches of rust-coloured blusher, for some reason. The white women, that is: Louise was exempted from the blush brush. Ominously, Nadia was spared any visible make-up at all. Maybe that was an important clue? That and the fact that the estranged but still caring Mrs Budd rejected her husband's attempt at intimacy after he'd performed an overwhelmingly heroic service to society, and saved their children in the process, at the start of episode 1. That's a bit harsh, I thought. But her instincts were clearly more refined. By the end of episode 6, when Nadia is truly defused, Vicky becomes all friendly again at last. And why not? Her husband is a hero, his face is back to normal, he's gorgeous, he loves her, he loves their children, and he's finally gelled his hair again. What's more, he's apparently well on the way to being healed mentally. This last point is an excellent advertisement for the power of Occupational Health, to which Budd is compassionately sent in the end by the McKee character. We see Budd entering the room (M18, perhaps a joke on MI5 and MI6?) and being greeted by the therapist: a woman, of course, with curly, indie locks and a flowing patterned scarf. Do we believe that this woman can help a man who has seen horrors in Afghanistan with his comrades and been through the further traumas of episodes 1 to 6? I don't. But I love happy endings, and if that's what it takes for the Budd family to drive off happily in a shiny Qashqai in the final scene, then I can try very hard to chalk up the therapist to merely the obtrusive feminism of the series as a whole.