Newsletter | Idris Elba's Hijack Is A Turbulent, Tense & Thrilling Ride

This column was originally published as part of our newsletter The Daily Show on August 9, 2023. Subscribe here. (We're awesome about not spamming your inbox!)

***

KEEP your seatbelt fastened for the entire duration of this flight. Remain calm. Do not attempt to leave your seat.

Apple TV’s latest hit – Hijack – is a turbulent, tense and thrilling ride. The plot isn’t very complicated; it’s all in the title. In real time (much like 24 with Keifer Sutherland as Jack Bauer), we follow the events surrounding a seven-hour flight from Dubai to London. Towards the tail end of the first episode, a group of seemingly unassuming passengers aboard this flight take complete control of the plane. And over the next six hours of television, we are the witnesses to the flight’s 200-plus passengers navigating and negotiating this nightmare, while on the ground air traffic controllers, police officers, counter-terrorism units, politicians and others are working out what’s happened and their response to this situation.

Created by George Kay (Lupin) and Jim Field Smith (Criminal), Hijack is a show that knows exactly what it wants to be and even manages to stick the landing. This is largely due to the series’ lead Idris Elba, who plays Sam Nelson, just another passenger on the flight, forlorn and private. He’s heading back to London to repair his broken marriage. Professionally, he is a skilled negotiator who is brought in to prevent multi-billion dollar deals from falling apart. In every episode, Elba the human catnip (think George Clooney, Pedro Pascal, Timothée Chalamet) is beautiful, brilliant and believable. And as his ex-wife Marsha perfectly phrases it, “When it all kicks off, Sam’s the best at handling it.” But also, major credit to the showrunners – Kay and Smith – for their control and craft in creating and keeping the tension taut within the plane. They also intelligently use the pattern of communication between the cockpit and air traffic control as a story-telling device to play with the pacing of the show — and it truly pays off.

While Elba’s bewitching biceps could have easily been employed to move the plot along, it is his calm, calculated and creative approach to trouble that comes in handy in Hijack. (Think: Stringer Bell from The Wire.) He’s constantly working through the possible solutions to give everyone what they want: the passengers a return home, and the hijackers their demands. Nobody needs to get hurt. But people do get hurt. The motivations for these murders are many, and Hijack handles each one of them with a knowing deftness. But back to bae, Elba’s face does most of the show’s heavy-lifting. He’s able to relay the most subtle shifts between sides – the passengers’ and the hijackers’ – that he constantly makes to maintain the situation. He is able to elicit trust, confidences and secrets from passengers and hijackers alike; but he doesn’t seem to abuse that information. Rather, Elba strategically uses it to draw out, delay and defy. And he’s called to display this expressive range quite quickly because Hijack’s determined momentum waits for no one, at least on the plane. There are some scenes and sequences on the plane that got me so jittery that I had to pause, step outside my apartment, and take a short walk in the neighbourhood before proceeding further.

However, there are moments when the steady speed slackens, and that’s unfortunately whenever we leave the plane’s premises. While the characters on the plane are interesting enough to warrant our feelings — I mean, they’re being hijacked! — or they serve the plot by being friend, foe or functionary to every one of Elba’s decisions, the people on the ground don’t seem to factor and therefore…fail? Not entirely; to be fair, there are little snippets of the air-traffic controllers’ scenes in Dubai and London that do work, especially Eve Myles as Alice Sinclair, a chaotic mom but calm-in-a-crisis professional at work, who is so endearing that you end up rooting for her. For the most part though, if the characters aren’t in danger of dying on a plane, then providing us with the many subplots on the ground doesn’t seem to work at all. Tinier portions of the on-ground reaction would have sufficed, and satisfied. Even the star quality of Archie Panjabi as counter-terrorism expert Zahra and Max Beesley as London cop Daniel isn’t enough. Hijack’s on-ground scenes don’t work because they take away from the tension, thrill and thrum of the series.

Hijack works best when it focuses on Elba. He definitely delivers. He brings a much-needed roundedness and range to the action hero character. And the showrunners – Kay and Smith – have mostly trimmed the excess fat though they do miss a few bits. Be warned: Hijack will have you scan and make notes on your co-passengers a lot more than usual on your next flight. Happy Journey! Not!