Do you like horror? Do you like Kevin Bacon? Then Amazon Prime’s The Bondsman is the show for you. It stars Bacon as a bondsman (hence the title) named Hub Halloran who, after having his throat slit by some thugs working for his ex-wife’s new boyfriend, discovers he’s an undead bounty hunter tasked with hunting down escapees from Hell. Why? Well, you find out.
Sounds fun, right? It’s a lot of fun… but well, the “hell” part should tip you off that it’s not for kids. Although there’s definitely a lot of lightheartedness in this show, it’s all about the horror first and foremost. Bacon is clearly having the time of his life as Hub… but your under-10s definitely won’t be having a good time if they catch a glimpse of all these hellish goings-on.
The Bondsman is rated TV-MA
The Bondsman is intended for mature audiences only. Here’s a rundown of what aspects of the show gave it that rating.
Sex and nudity: Hub and his ex-wife Maryanne do have sex, but it’s not explicit. There’s no full-frontal nudity either.
Violence and gore: There is, to put it mildly, a lot of violence and gore. There’s the throat-slit right at the beginning to start you off and it just gets worse from there. Hub constantly gets into fights with the demons he’s hunting down, as you’d expect, and the outcomes of the fights are almost always gory. A demon takes a chainsaw to the face at one point.
Language: It should come as no surprise whatsoever that this show features a lot of bad language. The f-word is said frequently.
Drinking and drugs: Hub spends a lot of time drinking and smoking. Drugs are part of the story as well–crystal meth is integral to one plot.
Frightening and intense scenes: No-one is safe in this show–not teenagers and not children. One plot revolves around a possessed child, who is functionally dead but with a demon piloting his body around. This may not be an easy watch for some parents either! The demons show up as terrifying black-eyed creatures who know nothing but evil, and when they’re defeated, they catch on fire.
One thing The Bondsman makes clear is that Hub isn’t a good person. The reason he’s damned to work for the devil (spoiler alert!) is because he accidentally shot and killed a woman while aiming for someone else, and buried her body out in the woods. That event haunts him, but not enough for him to come clean about it. Hub’s guilt over this leads to the cliffhanger ending of the show. Will there be another season where we find out what happens? Well… it’s hard to say. Season one was intentionally written with the hope of getting a season two, but that’s a risky move in TV land. There’s no news of a season two yet.
While it absolutely would not be appropriate to show The Bondsman to a young child, kids 16+ will probably be able to handle it. There’s even some questions you can pose to your kid if you’re watching it together, such as, did Hub make the right choice at the end? All signs point to no, and if season two materializes it’ll become clear why…