Suranne Jones makes determined women under pressure worth following, even when their scripts are less convincing. We value the seriousness she brings to a crisis, but Hostage asks her to supply too much of its credibility.
Fi1m perspective
In Hostage (2025), Suranne Jones makes Abigail Dalton’s predicament feel serious before the plotting has earned that response. Working with Julie Delpy, who plays Vivienne Toussaint, she gives us people to care about through a succession of doubtful crises. We were gripped by the kidnapping because the two leads made the pressure on their characters convincing. This is Jones’s particular value to a thriller: she can hold our attention on the person caught in it while the story strains belief.
Her years as Karen McDonald in Coronation Street (2000–2004) led to a career increasingly built around leading roles. She co-conceived Scott & Bailey (2011–2016), a police procedural built around a partnership. Doctor Foster (2015–2017) put her Dr Gemma Foster at the centre of a domestic thriller, with personal and professional crises giving her intensity a clear purpose. These programmes establish how often she is asked to play a woman who has to keep functioning under pressure.
Gentleman Jack (2019–2022) gave that determination a historical setting in Sally Wainwright’s drama, with Jones playing Anne Lister. Her vitality there matters as much as her forcefulness, and vulnerability prevents the performance from becoming merely imposing. Vigil (2021) placed her in a submarine-set thriller as DCI Amy Silva. The risk in such parts is coldness: determination can make a character compelling without making their company agreeable.
Hostage makes the dependence on its leads particularly clear. Catherine Derry’s unobtrusive cinematography suits a drama carried by performances, while Arwel Jones’s production design gives us too little sense of the people who work in these generic spaces. Jeff Russo’s music supplies urgency without making the crises more substantial. The five episodes move briskly, but there is only so much the cast can do to compensate for the loose plotting.
Jones is also an executive producer on Hostage, which makes it reasonable to ask for more than a reliable central performance. We would like her to have writing that needs less help from her conviction. For thriller devotees, Jones and Delpy are reason enough to consider it; anyone with little patience for loose plotting should choose something else.
Biography
Suranne Jones is an English actress and producer. She was born Sarah Ann Jones on 27 August 1978 in Chadderton, Greater Manchester.
Jones rose to prominence playing Karen McDonald in the ITV soap Coronation Street (2000–2004). She later starred as DC Rachel Bailey in Scott & Bailey (2011–2016) and as Dr Gemma Foster in Doctor Foster (2015–2017), for which she won the 2016 BAFTA Television Award for Best Actress. Other notable roles include Anne Lister in Gentleman Jack (2019–2022) and DCI Amy Silva in Vigil (2021–). She plays Abigail Dalton in the 2025 Netflix series Hostage, on which she also served as executive producer.
Jones has collaborated frequently with screenwriter Sally Wainwright and has appeared in stage productions including A Few Good Men (2005) and Frozen (2018). She is married to screenwriter Laurence Akers.
