Ride Or Die Review: Hannah Waddingham & Octavia Spencer Can't Save A Subpar Story

Even before Amazon bought the rights to the actual James Bond franchise, Prime Video has made its identity to be, in part, the "we have James Bond at home" streamer. Spy and assassin shows have been the service's bread and butter, ranging from popular book adaptations ("Jack Ryan," "The Terminal List") to more prestige plays ("Mr. and Mrs. Smith") to expensive attempts at launching new franchises (remember "Citadel"? Of course you don't, nobody talks about it anymore). As we wait to see what Denis Villeneuve and a yet-to-be-cast new actor do with Agent 007, more not-007 spy shows keep rolling out from Amazon MGM Studios.

"Ride or Die," created by Tessa Coates and showrun by Matt Miller, is Prime's latest entry in the genre. What's relatively fresh here is the emphasis on female friendship. Hannah Waddingham stars as the secret agent Whiptail, currently living under the civilian identity of "forensic accountant" Judith Burton. Her friendship with Debbie Claybourne (Octavia Spencer) might have started as a cover but is now the most genuine thing in her life. Debbie's husband David (Jamie Parker) is a top candidate for the United Kingdom's Prime Minister, a job has been pretty cursed as of late (will his career ambitions outlast a head of lettuce?). Inevitably, things go wrong, exposing Judith's secret life to Debbie and sending the two friends on a globe-trotting journey together.

Basically, "Ride or Die" is a buddy comedy take on the spy genre, and its strongest quality is the casting and chemistry of the two buddies. If you want more Hannah Waddingham on your TV but are skeptical about the return of "Ted Lasso," she makes a very convincing action heroine here, and Octavia Spencer elevates the material she's working with as she always does. If you're looking for anything more than that, however, "Ride or Die" ends up being underwhelming, failing to sustain attentive interest for its full eight-episode season.

As a comedy, I didn't really find "Ride or Die" funny. There are clever lines here and there, and some of its sillier moments made me smile — using hostel roommates' social media skills to track down a suspect, an argument over some "Lord of the Rings" trivia — but full-blown laughter? That was in short supply. Given the very subjective nature of comedy, maybe this will be more successful for other viewers, but for me, it was underwhelming.

I also found that the lightheartedness of the tone bumped up against the more serious parts of the story. Weirdly enough, these contrasts might have been less jarring if they felt more jarring? I'm all for big tonal swings, I love shows that can be ridiculous one moment and heartbreaking the next, but because the show is neither that funny nor that serious, the switches between modes feel less like a wild roller coaster ride and more like the vibes are just subtly off.

In terms of action, the series peaks with its cold open introducing Whiptail in the field (Peyton Reed of the "Ant-Man" movies directed the first two episodes) and proceeds to be competent but unmemorable for the rest of the series. It doesn't help the action scenes that the look of the show isn't very appealing. I wondered if the frequent blurriness of the cinematography was a problem with the screeners, but nope, watching the trailer in HD and looking at official screenshots confirms that's a regular feature of the show's look. Flashback scenes also feature some notably distracting digital de-aging.

Almost the opposite of my thoughts on "The Mandalorian and Grogu," where I felt I'd have been more forgiving of the movie's flaws if it was just more episodes of the TV show, I think I'd be more forgiving of the problems with "Ride or Die" if it were just one movie instead of a full series. There's just enough substance in the spy conspiracy testing Judith and Debbie's friendship that, with Hannah Waddingham and Octavia Spencer's great acting, it could be enough to recommend in the context of a fast-paced 2-hour romp.

Over eight hours, "Ride or Die" became a chore to get through. The show piles on subplots to pad out the runtime, but it's all very generic. The romantic subplots are okay — Ed Skrein is appealing as Judith's love interest Billy. The inner workings of the mysterious spy agency are pretty boring, but the material with Judith's handler Sam (Calam Lynch) and weapons dealer Queenie (Savannah Steyn) has some potentially interesting though underdeveloped drama. As for the big villain Redback (Sylvia Hoeks), I get what they're going for thematically with her backstory, but her general personality still feels like a feeble copy of every other unhinged female villain in a British crime show (think Ruth Wilson in "Luther" or Jodie Comer in "Killing Eve" for better versions of this same archetype).

"Ride or Die" is too baseline competent to hate, and its lead performances are well above mere competency. But it's a hard thing to review because there's really just not enough interesting material here, whether good or bad, to have much to say about. It feels designed as background TV — cute and inoffensive, but if you end up finishing it, I expect you'll be on your phone a lot of the time it's on. And sometimes that level of mediocre feels more frustrating than a truly "bad" show.

All eight episodes of "Ride or Die" premiere on Prime Video on July 15.