Hijack
Created by George Kay & Jim Field Smith
Written by George Kay
Directed by Jim Field Smith & Mo Ali
Starring
Idris Elba
Neil Maskell
Eve Myles
Christine Adams
Max Beesley
Archie Panjabi
Ben Miles
Kate Phillips
Executive producers Idris Elba, George Kay, Jim Field Smith, Kris Thykier, Hakan Kousetta, Jamie Laurenson
Production companies 60Forty Films, Archery Pictures, Green Door Pictures, Idiotlamp Productions
There hasn’t been a good plane hijacking show in some time, and there’s a reason for that. When you hijack a plane, especially a big passenger job like a 767, your options are limited. Try to land such a plane at any airport capable of accommodating such a plane, and there will be a whole bunch of big hairy guys with big hairy guns waiting to cut you to ribbons. Passengers as hostages? The soldiers can outwait you. Controlling a couple of hundred hostages who are getting increasingly thirsty, hungry, frightened and desperate, especially since the only sorts of weapons you can sneak on board aren’t particularly big or hairy, is not going to be tenable after a while. Land somewhere unexpected? Between ATC, satellite tracking and transponders, you aren’t going to catch authorities unaware by landing at the OTHER international airport three counties over. There’s only a handful of rogue states these days, and most of those who even have airports tend to have runways full of bomb craters. Even countries that don’t like us, like Russia, are going to think twice about the repercussions of helping a western airliner get ‘jacked.
That’s leaves suicide missions. If you can convince the authorities that you are really going to crash the plane, killing everyone aboard including, of course, yourself, then they might accede to your demands. Or they might note that you seem to be headed in the general direction of the local version of the twin towers, and regretfully blow you out of the sky.
That’s why 9/11 worked as well as it did. Osama bin Laden wanted the US government to overreact and become a highly disliked and mistrusted quasi-police state, and that’s exactly what happened. The US is still trying to undo the political damage he wrought. So suicide missions will be ended prematurely, keeping the death toll and political reaction to manageable numbers.
So while Hijack is built around the premise that a Qatari airliner is hijacked en route to London, the viewer shouldn’t expect that they are going to get away with it. Especially since one of the passengers is Idris Elba, even though he usually ends up getting a divorce/widowed and in trouble with his bosses for killing arrestees before prevailing in the end.
And that’s the reason why Hijack, despite a dead-end premise, works so brilliantly as a thriller. You aren’t invested in the plane or the passengers all that much; you’re watching to see how Idris Elba works his way through this and walks away only somewhat scathed. With a few exceptions, the passengers and crew aren’t a particularly sympathetic lot (you’ll actually smile when the pilot gets what’s coming to him) whereas some of the hijackers are actually quite relatable. Even “them Ay-rabs,” usually the heavies in such a drama, are shown as resolute and even heroic. By defying tropes, the show raises expectations, and thus the suspense. Even HM government, hagridden by Tories, is shown as mildly competent.
Idris Elba is the star of the show, make no mistake. Well, this IS Luther in a new role, right? But his subtle and nuanced performance takes what otherwise might have been a rather humdrum drama and makes all seven episodes absolutely riveting. Especially since they conceal so well what it is the hijackers actually want.
And that’s the plane truth.