What is it? Proof that subtitled dramas can be stupid.
Why you’ll love it: Thanks to shows such as The Killing and The Returned, European dramas have gained a reputation for non-stop prestigious solemnity. These shows unfold with novelistic poise, lingering on details that would have once been brushed aside. They rely on the audience to remember subtle plot points from distant episodes. These shows are beautiful, but they’re also hard work.
No Limit is the exact opposite: if Borgen redefined the complex nature of political drama, this is outside in the garden eating wallpaper paste. It is sitting in a hospital waiting room with a saucepan on its head. It is the GIF of the dog humping a fallen trampolinist. It is perfectly, totally dumb.
Unsurprisingly – at least to anyone who’s seen Taken or Lucy – No Limit is the brainchild of Luc Besson. It’s a French spy thriller about a soldier named Vincent Liberati who is diagnosed with a brain tumour and coerced into covertly joining the secret service in exchange for an experimental new drug treatment that will extend his life. But you know what? You can forget that. Liberati’s diagnosis comes roughly a minute into the very first episode, then he becomes a government spy about 30 seconds after that, and then the whole thing barely gets mentioned again for the rest of the series. It’s the flimsiest peg imaginable for a lot of silly action.
This show is designed to wash over you. It’s Knight Rider. It’s Magnum, PI. It’s fast-paced and unchallenging and relentlessly glib. Liberati – played wonderfully by Vincent Elbaz – is a sociopathically nonchalant Jack Bauer. Where Bauer wears the weight of the entire world on his shoulders, Liberati’s stock response to danger is a one-liner and a gallic shrug. In an early episode in a hunt for a dangerous drug dealer, he forces a baddie to fix his boiler. He runs over his own assistants without a hint of existential angst. He takes his teenage daughter shopping with gangsters tied up in his boot.
The closest No Limit ever comes to the golden age of TV is Liberati’s relationship with his daughter Lola. Although they start out estranged, they grow closer over the course of the series. But Lola is very much a stock temperamental teenager in the vein of Kim from 24 or Dana from Homeland. She sneaks out to clubs. She smokes pot. She often seems to exist only to blunder into scrapes her dad can rescue her from. It’s a tired old trope, and No Limit adds nothing to it.
Not that this matters much, because you’ll watch it for the action. Thankfully, it’s pretty much non-stop, to the point of outright gratuity. Liberati only walks anywhere if he’s ruled out the possibility of parkour, and he only parkours if he’s certain he can’t scuba dive. He fires himself out of torpedo tubes. He hijacks helicopters. The whole thing is a whirlwind of gormless stuntwork. Escapism is by no means a dirty word, and No Limit revels in it.
Where: Walter Presents (All 4)
Length: 22 hour-long episodes.
Stand-out episode: The first epiode sees Liberati endure misfortunes only to shrug them off as if nothing had happened.
If you liked No Limit, watch: 24 (Now TV)
