The Bondsman Could Be Supernatural on Streaming, but It Can't Crack the Half-Hour Drama Code

Theoretically, half-hour dramas should be thriving. The concept of a show that would traditionally air hourlong episodes handling its business in a tight 30 is very appealing to time-strapped viewers who have dozens of other shows in their queue. But in practice, they haven't really worked creatively or commercially. Some have gotten closer than others — On Call, Amazon Prime Video's fast-paced police procedural, is the current series that best delivers on the promise of what a half-hour drama in the post-Peak TV era could be — but so far, it's a niche format that has not reached its full potential. 

The latest half-hour drama, Prime Video'sThe Bondsman, is unlikely to be the show that causes short dramas to break through, but it can offer some ambitious producers insight into what works and what doesn't. 

There are two main reasons why half-hour dramas haven't caught on. One is that viewers don't know how to categorize them. In many viewers' minds, a half hour is for comedy and an hour is for drama, and shows that don't neatly fit this dichotomy throw them off. For evidence of this, see three years of arguments over whether The Bear should compete as a drama or a comedy at the Emmys. This reason is more fixable; if half-hour dramas become more popular, audiences will get used to them, and the problem solves itself. Which brings us to the other, more challenging reason: the perception that half-hour dramas are a lesser art form than hour-long dramas.

Even Julia Roberts, who starred in Prime Video's Homecoming, the most prestigious and ambitious half-hour drama of the past decade, felt this perception going into her show. When she heard that creator Sam Esmail wanted half-hour episodes, she was initially against it, she told IndieWire in 2018. "I'm just a product of mediocrity, and so to me, drama is an hour," she said. "Only teenagers can get drama done in 30 minutes. I was like, 'What are you talking about? We're tall. We need an hour.'"   

This perception becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy when the shows feel lesser. The format rarely attracts A-list writers and directors,  and the casts will usually have one big star — Kevin Bacon, in The Bondsman's case — surrounded by less famous performers. (Homecoming is the only one that had a true superstar in front of the camera and a name-brand filmmaker behind it.) It's not that any of these writers and directors and actors are bad or lesser, but the absence of a starry ensemble gives half-hour dramas a sort of B-movie feel.

The Bondsman embraces B-movie style. It's a horror drama about a backwoods Georgia bounty hunter named Hub Halloran (Bacon) who gets murdered while trying to apprehend a fugitive and gets sent back to Earth by Lucifer to catch demons that are escaping from Hell. His un-death gives him a new lease on life, and he tries to mend his strained relationships with his ex-wife (country singer Jennifer Nettles), teenage son (Maxwell Jenkins), and mother/business partner (Beth Grant). It's gory, it's darkly funny, and it has attitude. 

Unfortunately, though, it doesn't really work, in large part because it doesn't make the best use of its half-hour run time. The Bondsman feels like it wants to be an hour, with half the episode devoted to demon-chasing and the other half devoted to Hub's family drama. But rather than make it ruthlessly efficient to fit the half hour, The Bondsman spends about two-thirds on family and one-third on demons. This not only makes the demon-hunting part of the show feel shortchanged; it's also the wrong ratio. When the show about a demon hunter is more concerned with whether the demon hunter will allow his son to pursue a music career than it is with demon hunting, it's hard to not feel a little bait-and-switched.

It's too bad, because The Bondsman could have built on what On Call did by doing something new with a well-established TV format and helping Prime Video establish a template for the modern streaming procedural. It would be really fun as a monster-of-the-week show with some serialized family drama elements. A half-hour, R-rated streaming Supernatural, in other words. That seems like the best way forward for half-hour dramas. Take traditional genres and strip them down to their lean, mean essentials. Make them streamlined delivery vehicles for high concept, high energy entertainment. Julia Roberts won't star in them, but she won't need to, because they'll hit the way broadcast shows used to hit. 

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Prime Video is the streaming platform most committed to half-hour dramas and has experimented with several different forms of them. Homecoming was a prestige psychological thriller, The Consultant was a wry satirical thriller, and The Horror of Dolores Roach was a social commentary horror show with black comedy elements. The latter was, like The Bondsman, produced by Blumhouse, the studio that has been incredibly successful at making low-cost, overachieving horror movies, most notably Get Out. Blumhouse is famous for its willingness to experiment with different formats and give opportunities to up-and-coming filmmakers. Amazon and Blumhouse haven't cracked the half-hour drama code yet, but if they stick with it, they will eventually. And it could only take one hit to legitimize the half-hour drama, because it has so much creative upside. Done properly, the precision of a half-hour drama can be really satisfying, which Roberts ultimately came to realize. 

"It's just brilliant," she said of the half-hour drama format. "I love it so much because, I mean, as an audience member, it just leaves you like, 'Wait, it's over?' That's how I feel every time."

The Bondsman is now streaming on Prime Video.