Hijack, Starring Idris Elba, Is A Relatable Thriller For The TravelWeary

Every summer, a new show seems to slip into an otherwise fallow period and become an unexpected hit. This year, it just might be Hijack, a British thriller from the cocreator of Lupin that unfolds in real time over seven suspenseful episodes. The Hollywood Reporter calls the show “slick, exciting, unfussy.” The Guardian says it’s “beautifully daft.” Oh, and it stars Idris Elba as a smooth-talking but fallible hero. In other words, it’s the perfect binge watch—all episodes are now available to stream on Apple TV+—as the days get hotter and the Hollywood strikes threaten to eat into fall’s new-release calendar.

George Kay, who cocreated the show with director Jim Field Smith, says that the idea for Hijack first came to him on one of his regular train trips to Paris during production on Lupin, when the train abruptly stopped while in the Chunnel. “I had a kind of flash through my mind. I wondered if this was some serious incident, and I looked around at all the passengers and I kind of prejudged them one by one,” he says. There was the arguing family, the business traveler, the guy carrying everything in a rucksack. “I wondered, If this was an incident, how would we respond? Would we all cower in our seats, or would we try and face up to whoever these people might be?”

The train started moving again after only a few seconds, but the experience stayed with him. In Hijack, the drama shifts to the sky. Elba’s corporate negotiator, Sam Nelson, gets more than he bargained for when his flight home to London from Dubai is taken over by a group of armed passengers. On the ground, Sam’s ex—who isn’t exactly looking forward to his return—and son, Kai, wait for his arrival as government officials, air traffic controllers, and a counterterrorism agent played by Archie Panjabi try to resolve the incident.

“The plane idea was much better because there’s a whole society in the air,” Kay says. “That put me in mind of what we call in England ‘blitz spirit,’ which was this moment where London was bombed by the Germans in the war. Average British people showed such stoicism and bravery, and went beyond the norm in terms of their response.”

From the UK, Kay speaks with Vanity Fair about plotting the nail-biter, recreating the experience of a long-haul flight on set, and what he’s learned about writing shows for international audiences. Warning: mild Hijack spoilers ahead.

Vanity Fair: Did you always know you wanted to tell the story of Kingdom 29’s hijacking flight in real time?

George Kay: I wanted to do a limited-series pitch, and they tend to be six or seven hours, which felt very much like the length of a flight. It just felt quite natural to try and let it flow for real. I know a seven-hour flight can be tiresome, but when you’re hijacked, it’s a bit more interesting.

How did that decision change how you approached structuring the show?

Constraints are so liberating because you have to find the answers within those constraints. How can I move characters from central London to the outskirts of London if an episode is only 45 minutes long? If you can’t find the answers within those constraints, then they’re not achievable and you rule them out. I’m really proud of how we’ve all achieved the real-time feel.

What’s your collaborative process like with Jim Field Smith, who directed most of the episodes? There are some directing challenges in this show. You’ve got a big cast all sitting on an airplane.

We’ve been working together since we were 14, so we have an inherent trust and understanding of each other’s abilities. We had done a series before, Criminal, and I knew that Jim would absolutely excel at the creative side of directing this, but he’s also really interested in the factual research. So the plane that they made, our production designer and the whole team created such a realistic environment. It’s a completely hermetically sealed set. Everything is the real size; every button works; the light that goes past the windows changes as the sunlight really would on a seven-hour flight from Dubai. It’s really well researched and well achieved. Credit to the actors who put up with what was essentially a long-haul flight every day. Not that these talented actors needed to have any help with their performance, but that just added to that real feeling. Those in first class had bigger seats than those in coach. I can imagine that being kind of irritating if you’re in coach for six months rather than in first class. No shortcuts were made in that respect.

Everyone knows what it feels like to sit in a cramped airplane seat.

That’s a good point, because going back to the original idea, I really want to do stuff that’s relatable, and travel is such a relatable thing for all audiences. I hope that we could all channel ourselves into thinking, I know what it’s like to get on a plane. I know what it’s like when we can’t find a place to put our bag above our seat. That’s why it’s fun to sort of throw a hand grenade into that. Once you’ve got the audience in a relatable place, you ask, What would you do in this extreme situation? Some of the most fun writing that show was the first 15 minutes before the hijack starts.