Yes, we are certainly a country in distress, part of a world in distress. And sometimes you can’t help but think that things are careening out of control and that nothing can be done right now to change our direction.

But then you realize it could be worse, a comforting thought (or not), and we have Netflix to thank. For example, remember the series Designated Survivor, when, if my memory works, a bomb went off in the Capitol during the State of the Union address, killing all members of Congress, the President and all those Executive and Judicial Branch officials in attendance. That left the designated survivor, a completely inexperienced and recently appointed HUD Secretary in charge of a government that didn’t really exist any more.

And there have been many other shows where the country’s future looks bleak indeed, and films like Back to the Future, which showed the possibility of alternate histories, some of them downright awful.

Well, now Netflix gives us a five part British miniseries titled Hostage, and I hope you don’t waste your time watching it. If you think you will, stop reading here. But if not, read on.

Britain is in an awful, but unexplained, situation where people are dying because the National Health Service has run out of pharmaceuticals. The only answer seems to be for France, apparently awash in pharmaceuticals, to come to the rescue. The future of the UK, and the political future of Prime Minister Abigail Dalton, depend on it.

But French President Vivienne Toussaint has her own problems with an upcoming election. Britain has an open border policy and third-world immigrants/refugees are streaming across France to get to the Channel. Toussaint not only demands a change to British policy, but also wants French troops on British soil guarding the coast, as the price Britain must pay for French pharmaceuticals.  The two arrange a summit at 10 Downing Street. Both seem unwilling to compromise.

But then things happen. Dalton’s husband, a physician with Doctors Without Borders, is on a mission into the depths of French Guiana, when he and several other British doctors are kidnapped (by men dressed as masked ICE agents). They will be freed if Dalton resigns her PM post. Otherwise, they will be killed one by one. This event seems to have nothing to do with the shortage of drugs.

At about the same time, it looks like Toussaint might have to leave politics as well, as she is being blackmailed by someone who found a sex tape of her in bed with (I am not making this up) her 20-something year old step son. Of course, neither woman wants the other to learn of her predicament.

Can’t get any worse, you say? You are wrong. It can. And it does. A rigged laptop, innocently carried into 10 Downing Street, explodes, causing extreme damage, wounding Prime Minister Dalton, but killing President Toussaint. The search for the perpetrators intensifies, it turning out that the two, apparently disconnected, very attractive young women in the cast, one French, one British, are both spies for the villains (and both get their comeuppance) . And it turns out that the leader of this group is the general (think George C. Scott in Dr. Strangelove) who leads the UK military (the equivalent, I think of the head of the joint chiefs in this country), who has cone up with this complicated method to stage a coup because he holds a personal and secret grudge against Dalton for something she did a decade earlier. Something she did innocently, by the way.

Well, the bad guys finally lose, and the better (if not good) guys win. And France gives Britain all the pharmaceuticals it needs.

That’s it.

So it could be worse here, it seems, than it is today. And France just may not give us the medicines we need to survive.