Hijack review – Idris Elba makes this beautifully daft plane thriller soar

Apple TV+’s latest offering is Idris Elba on a Plane. He plays ordinary guy Sam Nelson – known for his business negotiating skills back on Earth – who finds himself trapped on a hijacked flight and forced into the role of reluctant hero. So it’s Idris Elba in Die Hard, too. And the seven-hour journey plays out in almost real time, so he is also Kiefer Sutherland in 24. Or rather it’s Idris Elba in 7, but the actual title of this brilliantly executed, suspenseful, daft and wholly convincing ride is Hijack. It doesn’t even have an exclamation mark.

I don’t know what the marketing people were thinking, but the casting folk played a blinder. Only Elba could carry this perfect piece of summer insanity off. Even then, it requires every ounce of his physically and metaphorically massive presence to do so.

To believe in the premise of Hijack for even one moment, you see, requires you to believe several difficult things. One: that there exists a man so potently charismatic he can persuade anyone – arrogant posh boy playing video games too loud, frantic passengers, jittery and bloodied hijackers, desperate people locking themselves in various unhelpful places – to listen to him and his reasonable proposals for turning down the video games, taking a deep breath, unlocking the door and generally trying to find a way to de-hijack the plane and not kill any of the 200-odd people on board.

Two: that there is a man so keenly alert and intelligent that he can deduce that a violent takeover is brewing from the presence of an unnaturally furrowed brow three rows down, and an aberrant washbag.

Three: that he could then keep his head sufficiently to orchestrate various plays, offences, measures and countermeasures up and down a plane among a disparate group of panicking passengers as the aisles are patrolled by an increasingly strung-out set of plane-nobblers.

(I cannot keep reusing the word “hijackers”, you see, and “terrorist” has a specific meaning with which this politics-free slice of bonkers fun does not want to pollute itself.)

But of course, Elba is – innately, majestically, irreducibly – all these things. And upon this rock, seven hours of preposterousness can safely be built. Which is not to say the creators have not taken their responsibilities seriously. It marshals its secondary characters with aplomb. The priest, the red herring (or is it two? Or three?), the stressed family of four either suffering marital difficulties or just having two children on a seven-hour flight from Dubai to London, the kind young single lady, the vulnerable schoolgirls, the stewardess having an affair with the captain (Ben Miles) are all given just enough personality to stop them becoming ciphers, but not enough to get in the way of the action. We care, but we are not asked to invest in any cumbersome way.

Hijack unfolds perfectly. Suspense builds, is released, builds again, a little more tension, a little longer wait until the elastic snaps back each time. Just when everything is at the point of being absolutely too much and you’re at the point of switching off and going out for a walk to recover, it will cut to a domestic scene involving the boring family to which Sam is inexplicably wanting to get back safely. Or if it just wants to keep the motor purring, a scene with the increasingly concerned people on the ground – including Alice (Eve Myles), the air traffic controller who first notices something’s amiss, counter-terrorism officer Zahra (Archie Panjabi) and eventually various government ministers trying to decide whether to shoot the plane down over water or let it crash into buildings.

Not a moment, not a drinks carton, not an in-flight entertainment system is wasted. Narrative seeds are sown, allowed to ripen and harvested at just the right moment. It works like clockwork without the (plentiful) larger twists being predictable. The only duff note is the brutal outbreak of violence from Captain Robin in the first episode, which stands out both for its moral and physical nastiness, and for the fact that nothing else in the remaining six-and-a-half hours suggests he is that type of man. Like everything else in Hijack, it serves to further the plot, but unlike everything else in Hijack, it comes at the cost of taking you out of the moment. And that is something you cannot afford to do too often when you are asking an audience to buy into Hijack’s level of absurdity for the duration.

After that, the journey is seamless. All turbulence is intended and the landing – for I binged all seven episodes in one sitting, and I bet you will too – impeccable. Perfect nonsense, to be enjoyed wholeheartedly – though probably, for anxious passengers, on terra firma.

• Hijack is on Apple TV+.