Prime Video’s ‘Informer’ is Like a Smarter, Darker ‘Bodyguard’

It’s hard not to draw comparisons between Amazon Prime’s new British drama Informer and Netflix’s Bodyguard. Both series are slick dramas about the toll terrorism is taking on modern British policing, and both prefer to look at the rot from within. Each start with a seemingly mundane train ride that spirals out into something terrifying. And both series are really, really good.

The problem with comparing Informer to Bodyguard is that where the Netflix import is obsessed with thrills and twists, Informer is far more interested in nuance and tragedy. If Bodyguard is a modern twist on James Bond, Informer is something far more mature, and more horrifying. In fact, it plays out like a smarter Bodyguard for grown ups.

Informer is, as it title suggests, about the various “informers” who help tip British counter-terrorism off to potential attacks, plots, and targets. It is a thankless role that forces people to basically narc on their own communities. Needless to say, it’s hard for officers like Paddy Considine’s Gabe Waters and Bel Powley’s Holly Morten to cultivate informers that produce results. Episode 1 of the series shows us how Gabe and Holly target Raza Shar (Nabhaan Rizwan) and coerce him into becoming an informer.

We meet Raza in his world, that of a second-generation Pakistani immigrant trying to navigate his own cultural world, and that of white England. In an early scene, the charming young man is winning his way through a flat share interview with some uppity hipsters until he points out that one of the artists stupidly framed his own mundane street as the center of a revolution. Although Raza is looked at as an outsider, it is in fact these gentrifiers who have got it all wrong.

After Raza gets caught in possession of a small amount of MDMA, he winds up in jail, and catches Holly’s eye as a potential recruit. When he rebuffs Gabe and Holly’s offer to turn informer, though, the two of them systematically destroy his life. They arrest his father on trumped up charges and threaten to ruin his undocumented mother. At the very end of the episode, Gabe shows Raza the power that comes with being an informer: not only is his family safe, but he gets to choose one undocumented stranger to slip through the cracks of the immigration system. It’s a horrible moment that Raza understands is messed up. And even as terrorism is show as a divisive tactic intended to drive populations to hate immigrants, you can see how Gabe and Holly’s strategies also create irrevocable fissures in communities.

As all this is happening, we see in a parallel storyline what happens to one informer who goes too far in helping the British government’s cause. It’s a stark reminder that what Raza is embarking on is perilous to the extreme.

Informer is engrossing and beautiful, complex, and haunting to say the least. It’s shot with an attention to color and contrast, so that shots look like saturated watercolors or stark black and white photos. It creates an intoxicating image of London that is frightening in its contrasts. The best part of Informer though has to be Nabhaan Rizwan. The newcomer is an instant star, as he carries us into Raza’s world with total grace.

Informer is now streaming on Prime Video.

Watch Informer on Prime Video