They say that, statistically speaking, air travel is the safest form of transportation of them all. But the writers for TV would appear to wish to challenge that assumption. Just recently we’ve had ITV’s ‘Red Eye’ and Netflix’s ‘Hijack’ bringing terror to the skies – and now Walter Presents are getting in on the act with ‘Hostage‘.
If you want to avoid all spoilers, stop reading this article now.
Hostage (Kapningen in its native Swedish) is about a Nordic Airlines flight that is remotely hijacked mid-air. All is going normally, when suddenly there’s a power outage on-board. But before anyone work out why the power failed, it comes back on – but with a computer-generated message informing the pilots that there’s a bomb on the plane that will detonate unless certain conditions are met. One condition being that a Lebanese music professor, Saïd Khelfi (Tsahi Halevi), who is due to be extradited to the US on terrorism charges, is released. And the second that all files relating to Operation Tennyson – which at this stage no-one knows anything about – are released.
The opening episode mostly supplies us with the background on each of the main characters involved in the drama, setting the scene nicely for the upcoming revelations. This is a nicely paced piece of television, gently weaving each individual thread into a pleasing character-led thriller.
Alex Recht (Jonas Karlsson) is the co-pilot and father of two. His father, Erik (Adam Lundgren) is a former police officer who, we learn, left the force after suffering some sort of mental health episode. When a former colleague, Greger, informs him that his son is the pilot on a plane that’s been hijacked, he’s drafted in to assist with the communications to the cockpit.
Fredrika Bergman (Liv Mjönes) works for the Ministry of Justice, and she’s brought in by the authorities to interview Khelfi to try to determine what he knows about the hijacking and whether or not he instigated it – despite being held in custody for four weeks.
Eden Lundell (the fabulously named Ana Gil de Melo Nascimento) is leading the investigation into the hijacking. She’s the rather typically maverick authority figure – bold, reckless (her driving leaves a lot to be desire) and ballsy.
I must confess to really enjoying airplane dramas, and this has all the right ingredients to make it a binge-worthy series. The characters seem interesting and engaging, the plot – as revealed so far – is intriguing, and the acting solid throughout. Okay, so it’s not perfect – there are already a few moments that leave you scratching your head saying “really?”. But overall, it’s a fun ride and well worth a watch.
One tip, though – you might not want to watch this prior to taking your next long-haul flight, as it might give you the colly-wobbles.
Walter Presents: ‘Hostage’ will launch with a double bill on C4 Streaming starting 16th August 2024 with weekly episode releases following.
