‘Hijack,’ With Idris Elba, Is a Throwback Thriller
A few years ago, the writer-producer George Kay was commuting by train from his home in London to France, where he was working on the series “Lupin.” Suddenly, as the train went through a tunnel under the English Channel, it stopped. Kay, ever the writer, put his imagination and anxiety to work.
“I looked around at the different passengers and I thought, Well, how would we cope as a group of people in this compartment if there was some serious sort of incident going on?” he recalled. “Is the guy who works out and looks tough in his suit going to be any more useful to us than the two little old ladies who are doing the crossword down the row?”
Thus the seed was planted for “Hijack,” a seven-part thriller that premiered Wednesday on Apple TV+. The limited series stars Idris Elba (who is also an executive producer) as Sam, a corporate negotiator flying home from Dubai to London when his flight is taken over by a group of armed thugs. Created by Kay and the director Jim Field Smith, it unfolds in real time over the course of the seven-hour flight, toggling back and forth from the drama in the air to the strategy and panic on the ground, where law enforcement, air traffic controllers and politicians try to stay one step ahead of impending disaster.
Led by Sam, who quietly and quickly puts his negotiating skills to use (he explains to one of the hijackers that he is trying to ensure a better outcome for everyone), the passengers constitute a sort of social experiment. Rich and poor, young and old, of multiple ethnicities, they form a cross-section of society. They’re stuck with one another, for seven hours anyway, and they may or may not make it out alive.
Source: The New York Times
