Ride or Die
Sometimes your best friend is the last person you'd expect to be an international assassin.
Platform: Prime Video
Genre: Action / Comedy / Spy Thriller
Created by: Tessa Coates
Starring: Hannah Waddingham, Octavia Spencer, Bill Nighy, Sylvia Hoeks
Episodes: 8
Runtime: Approximately 45–55 minutes per episode
Release Date: July 15, 2026
Mystery Cartridge Classification: BEYOND THE CARTRIDGE
Rating: OPEN THE FILE — RECOMMENDED
The Case
Let's establish something right away:
Ride or Die is ridiculous.
Not "this show has a couple of unbelievable moments" ridiculous.
It is how in the hell are these two people still alive? ridiculous.
And that's exactly why we had such a good time watching it.
Prime Video's Ride or Die follows Debbie Claybourne, a former lawyer living a relatively comfortable life in London, and Judith Burton, her best friend of decades. Debbie thinks she knows Judith.
She does not.
Judith is actually an international assassin.
When Debbie discovers her friend's secret life, and a job goes spectacularly wrong, the two women find themselves on the run across Europe, pursued by assassins, criminals, and law enforcement.
What follows is part spy thriller, part action comedy, part road movie, and part story about two middle-aged best friends realizing that they may not know each other nearly as well as they thought.
And somehow, it works.
The Best Part Is the Friendship
You could make Ride or Die entirely about the assassinations.
You could make it about the chase.
You could make it about the increasingly elaborate ways Judith gets herself and Debbie out of trouble.
And it probably still would have been entertaining.
But the thing that makes the show work is Debbie and Judith.
Hannah Waddingham and Octavia Spencer have fantastic chemistry.
They don't just feel like two actors who have been told they're supposed to be best friends. They feel like women who have actually known each other for years.
They laugh together.
They annoy each other.
They finish each other's thoughts.
They have the kind of private jokes and shorthand that only develops after a very long friendship.
And when Debbie discovers that Judith has been hiding an entire career as a professional killer, her reaction isn't simply:
"You're an assassin?!"
It's also:
"You lied to me."
That distinction is important.
Because underneath all of the guns, explosions, car chases, international intrigue, and extremely questionable survival decisions, Ride or Die is really about friendship.
Critics have repeatedly singled out the chemistry between Waddingham and Spencer as the show's greatest strength, and we completely agree.
An Assassin Who Really Should Have Mentioned This Earlier
Judith is a fascinating character because she isn't presented as some emotionless killing machine.
She's good at what she does.
Very good.
But she's also funny, impulsive, occasionally chaotic, and apparently has never met a plan she couldn't improve by improvising.
The show gets a lot of mileage out of the contrast between Judith's professional life and Debbie's increasingly absurd realization that her best friend has apparently been living an entirely separate existence.
Imagine discovering that your best friend is secretly an international assassin.
Now imagine discovering it while you're both being chased across Europe.
Now imagine realizing that she's really, really good at being an international assassin.
At some point, you have to stop asking questions and just get in the car.
Debbie Is the Audience
Debbie provides the perfect counterbalance.
She's not an action hero.
She isn't secretly an assassin.
She isn't particularly interested in becoming one.
She's a normal woman who has suddenly been dropped into an absolutely insane situation.
And that's what makes her so much fun.
Debbie reacts to the madness approximately how a normal person should react to the madness.
Someone gets shot?
She's concerned.
Judith comes up with another completely insane plan?
She's skeptical.
Someone starts explaining the international conspiracy?
She's probably got questions.
And then, gradually, Debbie starts adapting.
That's one of the most enjoyable parts of the show.
We're watching someone who never asked for this life discover that she is considerably more capable than she thought.
Is It a Mystery?
Well...
Kind of.
This isn't a traditional mystery in the Who killed Colonel Mustard in the conservatory? sense.
But there is enough mystery woven through the story to keep us interested.
Judith's past is a major piece of the puzzle.
Who is after her?
Why?
Who can they trust?
What exactly is going on inside the organization she worked for?
And how much of Judith's story is Debbie actually getting?
The show feeds those questions into the larger action plot rather than stopping everything for a traditional detective investigation.
For us, that's perfectly fine.
Not everything has to be a murder mystery to scratch the same itch.
Sometimes the mystery is simply:
"Okay, what the hell is actually going on?"
The Action
The action is deliberately over-the-top.
This is not trying to be Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.
It's closer to the tradition of big, ridiculous action comedies where physics is more of a suggestion than a law.
Cars crash.
People get thrown around.
Assassins appear.
People survive things that should absolutely have killed them.
And somehow, everyone keeps going.
And honestly?
Good.
We didn't come to Ride or Die looking for a documentary on international assassination.
We came for Hannah Waddingham and Octavia Spencer running around Europe while everything goes horribly wrong.
The show delivers exactly that.
The Humor
The comedy is another reason this works.
It's not wall-to-wall jokes.
Instead, a lot of the humor comes from the characters' reactions to increasingly ridiculous circumstances.
Debbie's disbelief.
Judith's complete confidence in plans that absolutely should not work.
The contrast between these two women.
And the sheer absurdity of dropping ordinary middle-aged friendship dynamics into a spy thriller.
There's something inherently funny about watching two lifelong friends argue about their relationship while one of them is simultaneously trying to escape professional assassins.
That's the show's sweet spot.
Why We Recommend It
Ride or Die isn't trying to reinvent television.
You've seen versions of this story before.
You've seen secret assassins.
You've seen buddy comedies.
You've seen road movies.
You've seen people running from mysterious organizations.
What makes this version work is who gets to be at the center of it.
These aren't twenty-something action heroes.
They're two women with decades of friendship between them.
They have history.
They have baggage.
They have secrets.
And, apparently, one of them has a very impressive body count.
That gives the familiar action-comedy formula a surprisingly warm center.
It's ultimately a story about what happens when someone you've known for years turns out to have a gigantic secret—and whether the friendship can survive the revelation.
The fact that the secret happens to involve international assassinations is just what makes things interesting.
🚨 MANNEQUIN WARNING 🚨
There are no mannequins.
None.
Zero.
Not even a suspicious store display lurking in the background.
There are assassins.
There are guns.
There are explosions.
There are people who make catastrophically bad decisions.
But there are no mannequins.
The Mystery Cartridge's mannequin detection team can stand down.
Final Verdict
Ride or Die is silly.
It's occasionally ridiculous.
Its plot sometimes gets more complicated than it needs to be.
And we had a great time watching it.
That's ultimately what matters.
Hannah Waddingham and Octavia Spencer are terrific together, and their friendship gives the show something that a lot of action comedies don't have: an emotional reason to care about what happens.
We wanted Debbie and Judith to make it.
We wanted their friendship to survive.
We wanted to see what ridiculous situation they'd get themselves into next.
And we wanted to see Judith explain just how she thought whatever insane plan she had was going to work.
Sometimes a show doesn't need to be profound.
Sometimes it just needs to be fun.
Ride or Die is fun.
It's a fast-moving, funny, surprisingly warm action-comedy with two fantastic leads and just enough mystery to keep us guessing.
Open the file.
Then buckle up.
🔎 THE MYSTERY CARTRIDGE VERDICT
OPEN THE FILE — RECOMMENDED
Mystery: ★★★★☆
Story: ★★★★☆
Action: ★★★★☆
Comedy: ★★★★☆
Characters: ★★★★★
Chemistry: ★★★★★
Pacing: ★★★½☆
Mannequins: 0/10
The Case: Closed (at least until season 2? One can hope).
The Friendship: Complicated.
The Body Count: Probably best not to ask.
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