Bodyguard season 2? The BBC has a Jack Bauer on its hands with David Budd

The first season has set Budd up as an action hero to build multiple seasons around

In Sunday night’s Bodyguard finale, the plot to assassinate Julia Montague was unveiled and the crooked chief superintendent was outed. It neatly tied up the season’s narrative arc, but it felt like only a starting point. Luke Aitkens and his associates may have been rounded up, but the terrorist cell they conspired with is still very much active, led by intriguing new villain Nadia.

“Some say you should get a medal, others reckon you should be kicked off the force,” police commander Anne Sampson told David Budd after his high-risk heroics – setting him up as a classic he’s-unorthodox-but-damnit-he-gets-results protagonist for multiple seasons.

Bodyguard creator Jed Mercurio has said that he would “absolutely” do a second series, but has worries over whether he’ll get one. “Some shows do nosedive at the end, or some piece of content could become incredibly controversial and affect the way the show is seen,” he told the Radio Times before the finale aired. “In the end, you have to accept that the broadcaster holds all the cards.”

With the conclusion to the show having proven neither controversial nor nosediving, and Bodyguard breaking ratings records for the BBC, a second season now seems a certainty. The only potential roadblock is actor Richard Madden’s availability; Mercurio fears that the Game of Thrones star’s turn in the show will bring a slew of other big acting jobs. It doesn’t get much bigger than a BBC One drama, though – at least in the UK – and I would be very surprised if Madden doesn’t make time for a return to the role.

The BBC has a Jack Bauer on its hands with David Budd, a maverick hero that multiple seasons could be built around, as he foils a variety of terror plots and provides protection to more and more powerful “principals”.

“I’m David and I need some help,” he confessed in the finale, confronting his post-traumatic stress disorder caused by his time in the Afghanistan war. This will surely be explored further in future seasons, along with the psychosexual stuff which was the best thing about the show and abandoned too quickly when Montague was killed off. Back when it looked like Bodyguard was going to be a show about the relationship between the protector and the protected, it felt like it could be a contained, one season show. But the pivot to a more straightforward whodunnit – for better or worse – sets Bodyguard up as the kind of show that could go for eight seasons.

What will be interesting to see is whether that’s compatible with Budd’s psyche. It was a thrill to see him seek help in the finale, the show scoring a point for mental health awareness as it subverted the trope of the male action hero who is impervious to emotion and hardship (or at least fails to recognise their instability). It does, however, present a problem going forward. The Jack Bauers and Jack Ryans of the TV world have to be hardened, impenetrable types as they’re exposed to a frankly absurd amount of peril. With Budd’s first outing driving him to attempt suicide, it might strain credulity when he signs up for another dangerous police protection job.