Hey, if you're a fan of Idris Elba, check out Hijack, a seven-episode mini-series just concluded on Apple TV+. Even if you're not a fan, if you have a pulse and an intellect, you're bound to like it.
I've been a big fan since Elba played Stringer Bell on The Wire on HBO -- I mean, second in command of a drug cartel in Baltimore, who went to night school and read the original Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations? You can beat that. There've been lots of shows about drug cartels, but none even remotely like that.
Hijack is about a hijacked plane. Right. They've been lots of shows about hijacked planes, but nothing quite like Hijack. Elba plays Sam Nelson. He's on the hijacked plane. Good thing for the plane and the passengers. He's not a marshall. He's some kind of corporate deal maker. I'm still not clear what that is. But the up side of that is that it makes just what Sam will do almost always unpredictable. He's a good guy for sure, but with an inscrutable agenda, other than saving the plane.
Neil Maskell plays Stuart Atterton, clearly a bad guy, but also with an inscrutable agenda. The inscrutability of these major characters comes in and out focus, and keeps the viewers almost as much on the edge of their seats as the passengers on the plane. Ok, the two sides of the screen -- viewers at home and passengers on the plane -- are two different universes, but you get what I mean. Maskell, by the way, played another inscrutable, charismatic villain -- Arby in Utopia.
And while we're on the subject acting talent in this mini-series, we get Eve Miles (Keeping Faith) and Archie Panjabi (The Good Wife) as minor but memorable characters in the London central control room. Hey, I've told you nearly nothing about the plot, hence no spoiler warning. But I will say there are big surprises in every episode, right up until to the very end.
And Hijack gives us one of Elba's very best performances, right up there with The Wire and Luther.
Kudos to series creators George Kay and Jim Field Smith.
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