Hijack

Panjabi is the quiet standout. She has been doing sharp police work on television since The Good Wife, and she brings exactly that economy here. Maskell is reliably menacing without tipping into caricature. Anne Reid, at 88 when the show was shot, does more with a look than most of the hijackers do with their weapons.

🧠 What It's Really About

The tagline is "a negotiator on a plane", and at face value that is all the show is. I think there is a bit more going on, though not a lot more. Hijack is curious about what corporate-negotiator skills actually are when the stakes stop being a procurement contract. Sam Nelson is a liar by profession. The show wants to know whether that makes him uniquely suited to saving the plane or uniquely suited to making everything worse.

The other thread is about institutional failure. The ground-based investigation keeps running into jurisdictional gaps and bureaucratic friction. People who are technically doing their jobs correctly, while the situation in the sky deteriorates faster than the system can react. Gahfoor's instincts are ahead of the process. The process is slower than it should be. George Kay writes this kind of frustration well, and it is the part of the show that feels most recognisable to anyone who has watched British procedurals before.

If Luther is one man running at crime like a bulldozer, Hijack is a room full of professionals whose processes were not designed for this Tuesday.

🎨 Visual Identity

Much of Hijack happens in an aluminium tube, which is both the premise and the constraint. Field Smith and Kay shoot the plane with a lot of handheld and tight lenses, keeping eyelines close and the aisle feeling narrower than it physically is. The ground sequences get more breathing room. The Met's counter-terror operations room is shot like a procedural and the air traffic control scenes are shot like their own small drama. There is nothing here that will change how television looks. The direction is capable and the editing between strands is clean.

The sound design does more than the visuals. The engine hum, the cabin silence, the deliberate absence of a pushy score give the cabin scenes a flatness that the actors fill with voice. When the score does arrive, it is restrained. That restraint is maybe the single best aesthetic choice the show makes.

📈 Reception & Legacy

Critics were mixed on Hijack. Most agreed Elba was the reason to watch and that the premise had more potential than the execution fully realised. The Guardian and The Telegraph landed broadly positive, while The New York Times and Variety were more reserved, pointing out that the real-time conceit starts to strain when the ground story requires multiple time jumps to work. Audiences liked it more than critics did, which is a pattern for mid-tier Apple TV+ thrillers. It was one of Apple's most-watched dramas of 2023.

Apple ordered a second season in January 2024. Season 2, which premiered in January 2026, resets the premise: a different hijack, different characters, and Elba staying on as executive producer rather than lead. That is an interesting anthology move, the kind of format reset The Night Agent also went for. Whether the second season pays off is a different review.

🏆 Why It Works, And Where It Doesn't

Hijack works because Idris Elba is a genuine film star giving a committed performance on television, and because the ticking-clock premise is one of the most reliable engines in drama. I watched the season in three sittings and was never bored.

Where it does not work is at the level of pure plotting. The ground investigation asks you to accept some convenient coincidences. The hijackers' motives come into focus in a way that is functional rather than surprising. A few of the character decisions in the back half will have you arguing with the screen. If you came in expecting the psychological depth of Slow Horses or the political teeth of The Diplomat, you will find a simpler show than that.

What you get instead is a well-cast thriller that moves at the right pace and knows exactly what it is. Not elevated prestige. A solid seven hours with a star who earns every minute of screen time. Sometimes that is exactly what television is for.

Neil Maskell

Stuart