The airborne thriller “Hijack” on Apple TV+ unfolds in real(ish) time when a seven-hour flight from Dubai to London is hijacked. One of the passengers is played by Idris Elba, the coolest customer in these not-so-friendly skies, who uses his talents as a corporate negotiator to talk down this group of high-strung criminals and save everyone on board.
It’s a British series (cocreated by George Kay, whose credits include “Lupin,” and director Jim Field Smith) but “Hijack” is indebted to a long line of similarly-themed Hollywood thrillers, from “Air Force One” to “Con Air” to “Non-Stop.” In a different era, this would have been a movie as well. There’s no reason it isn’t — it’s ridiculous, actually — except that streaming platforms are all too happy to stretch out any premise imaginable, whether it works for the story or not.
The problem is, you can only sustain this kind of “what are they going to do!” suspense for so long. Seven 45-minute episodes? Too long. Stories like these are contingent on a tight, high-tension energy driving them, and it’s too bad “Hijack” misunderstands that because the series is pulpy and gripping in the early going: “Die Hard” in the sky. I was into it! Better than your average in-flight entertainment! But it’s a bad sign when you get to the last few episodes and think: Shouldn’t we have wrapped this up already? A long flight is one thing; a long story about said flight is … well, optimistic about audience attention spans.
