It seems, rather like buses, you wait and wait for one airplane-set drama to arrive and then two arrive at once. Earlier this year I watched the Idris Elba-starring "Hijack" series and here we are, up in the air again, for this fast-moving, if fantastically-plotted political thriller.
It starts with a bang as we see Richard Armitage's Dr Nolan character, out in China with a bunch of friends and colleagues to attend a medical conference, obviously under the influence of something, crash his speeding car in the nighttime rain, but somehow still manage to escape the scene and get on the return flight to London. Unknown to him, he's been inveigled into a major political incident which means that on arrival back in London he's forced to return to Beijing to go on trial it would appear for the murder of the pretty Chinese lady who picked him up at the evening reception there. His colleagues are also sent back with him, presumably as witnesses and he also has as company a WPC Hana Li, played by Jing Lusi, into whose custody he's placed, requiring them to be handcuffed together on board.
On the ground, the WPC's younger half-sister, a budding reporter gets wind of the political high jinks and senses a breakthrough story, especially with her sis as the perfect inside-woman but MI5 are also on the case, under the watchful eye of Lesley Sharp's commander. The Magoffin in all this is a sensitive multi-billion pound contract with the Chinese for a new UK-based nuclear plant, which naturally attracts the interest of the CIA, whose own chief operative just happens to be romantically involved with Sharp. The scene is set then for a real rollercoaster of a plane journey as the body count mounts up, with no-one who they seem to be as Nolan and Li overcome their initial frostiness to put themselves in considerable danger as they try to get to the bottom of the mystery and save the country or at least the country's economy, in the process.
Far-fetched it may inevitably have been, but this production kept injecting enough cliff-hanging twists and turns into the pacy narrative to keep me interested all the way through. Solidly acted by old-hands Armitage and Sharp with strong support from the new-to-me Lusi as the remarkably resourceful Li, this was one flight where it was best to engage autopilot and just go along for the sometimes bumpy ride until you come back to earth at journey's end.
It starts with a bang as we see Richard Armitage's Dr Nolan character, out in China with a bunch of friends and colleagues to attend a medical conference, obviously under the influence of something, crash his speeding car in the nighttime rain, but somehow still manage to escape the scene and get on the return flight to London. Unknown to him, he's been inveigled into a major political incident which means that on arrival back in London he's forced to return to Beijing to go on trial it would appear for the murder of the pretty Chinese lady who picked him up at the evening reception there. His colleagues are also sent back with him, presumably as witnesses and he also has as company a WPC Hana Li, played by Jing Lusi, into whose custody he's placed, requiring them to be handcuffed together on board.
On the ground, the WPC's younger half-sister, a budding reporter gets wind of the political high jinks and senses a breakthrough story, especially with her sis as the perfect inside-woman but MI5 are also on the case, under the watchful eye of Lesley Sharp's commander. The Magoffin in all this is a sensitive multi-billion pound contract with the Chinese for a new UK-based nuclear plant, which naturally attracts the interest of the CIA, whose own chief operative just happens to be romantically involved with Sharp. The scene is set then for a real rollercoaster of a plane journey as the body count mounts up, with no-one who they seem to be as Nolan and Li overcome their initial frostiness to put themselves in considerable danger as they try to get to the bottom of the mystery and save the country or at least the country's economy, in the process.
Far-fetched it may inevitably have been, but this production kept injecting enough cliff-hanging twists and turns into the pacy narrative to keep me interested all the way through. Solidly acted by old-hands Armitage and Sharp with strong support from the new-to-me Lusi as the remarkably resourceful Li, this was one flight where it was best to engage autopilot and just go along for the sometimes bumpy ride until you come back to earth at journey's end.