Emraan Hashmi is back in our lives, ladies, gents and everyone else. And after binge-watching seven episodes of Netflix’s Bard of Blood, I can say for sure that it’s a good thing.

The big-budget Netflix series, co-produced by Shah Rukh Khan’s Red Chillies, is a taut, ambitious spy/espionage thriller. The source material is a book written by Bilal Siddiqui and it’s intensely geopolitical in nature. But the Netflix series ends up holding your attention, even if you aren’t clued into politics and current affairs. This is perhaps its biggest win: not having to resort to unnecessary humour or subversion to be engaging. It’s true to its genre: a thrilling spy series — nothing more, nothing less.

Bard of Blood is the most un-Emraan Hashmi like series for him to make his digital debut with  especially if you go by the kind of films he has done in the last decade. As I type this, I keep having flashes of a younger Hashmi from Murder. *. But Hashmi’s earnestness in playing a no-nonsense spy, his eloquence, his subtle yet dramatic performance and his ability to sink into his character will surprise you. It took me all of 10 seconds to believe this character and world, after which Bard of Blood went by swimmingly.