Throughout, Kay (who wrote or co-wrote all episodes) and Smith (who directed most of them) keep the tension at a delicious thrum. Over the next six, the 200-plus passengers aboard figure out how best to survive the ordeal, while those on the ground - air traffic controllers, law enforcement officers, government officials and the like - piece together what’s happened, and figure out how to respond.Ĭast: Idris Elba, Archie Panjabi, Neil Maskell, Christine Adams, Max Beesley, Eve Myles, Jasper Britton, Harry Michell, Aimée Kelly, Mohamed Elsandel, Ben Miles By the end of the first chapter, a small group of nefarious agents, led by the sneering Stuart (Neil Maskell), have taken control of the plane. Unfolding in real time, 24-style, the seven-hour miniseries chronicles a seven-hour flight from Dubai to London. Its premise is as straightforward as its title. But there’s something to be said for a show that knows exactly what it wants to be, and pulls it off without pretension. Creators George Kay ( Lupin) and Jim Field Smith ( Litvinenko) may not be pushing the bounds of the medium, nor is star Idris Elba elevating his craft to new heights. As it stands, it’s ideal for a lazy weekend planted firmly on the couch. He is, quite simply, the outstanding candidate for the role.Were it not for, you know, its terror-at-35,000-feet concept, Apple TV+’s Hijack would be the TV equivalent of a classic plane read: slick, exciting, unfussy. While there’s undoubtedly something encouraging, if you happen to be of a liberal disposition, about the idea of a black, working-class actor taking on a role which has previously represented a certain kind of white, fusty, upper-middle-class establishment Britishness, that’s not the reason why Elba should be sticking to his Walther PPKs. He is wrong again, certainly in the matter of Elba getting the Bond job. Which hints that the 75-year-old actor thinks this is all about political correctness. Kotto also dismissed “people who project racial issues into movies”, such as those who thought that the civil-rights drama Selma should have done better at the Oscars. If this were not the case, 007 would still be trying to seduce women named Pussy Galore, boasting about having Christmas in Turkey, and barking at black co-workers to fetch his shoes. We have pens roles that no one else has established.”īut he’s wrong, because JFK is a historical figure for whom a change of race would have all kinds of cultural implications, while Bond is a fictional creation who, like all such figures, is able to shift and adapt over time according to changes in the society in which he exists. These roles are not written for black men. Kotto, who was the first African-American actor to play a major Bond villain, added: “Black men should stop trying to play roles created by whites. Both ideas, mused the actor who played Kananga in 1973’s Live and Let Die, should be “laughed out of the room”. This week, Yaphet Kotto stepped into the row in an interview with the Big Issue in which he said that Bond could no more be black than he (Kotto) could be cast as JFK. Moore subsequently blamed translation difficulties and denied referring to Elba or making a racist comment, but the damage was done. First there was old raised-eyebrow himself, Roger Moore, who tripped up in an interview with Paris Match when he appeared to rule out the prospect of a black 007 by suggesting that the character should be “English-English”.
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