Richard Armitage has had an interesting CV of late. First there was Netflix's dark bonkbuster Obsession, then the equally bonkers but much less dark Fool Me Once. Now there's another "This couldn't possibly happen, right?" entry to his body of work with ITV's Red Eye.
The six-parter follows Armitage as Dr Matthew Nolan, returning to his Obsession mould as a British doctor in hot water. But this time those are international waters. When Nolan steps off a long-haul flight home from a medical conference in China looking like death warmed up, he's detained on suspicion of murdering a Chinese citizen.
Armitage grunts the words "British citizen" and "British soil" a lot to no avail, while being grilled by airport police, all of whom inexplicably display the identikit bald menace of Dune's Harkonnen clan.
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DC Hana Li, played by Jing Lusi, is then roped in to escort Nolan back to Beijing on the 10-plus hour flight returning the way he just came. On a side note, if you've ever wondered how much of a deep clean these flights get in between legs, the picture painted by Red Eye isn't a promising one.
En route to the Chinese capital, passengers start to be picked off by a shadowy figure lurking among them, leading DCI Hana to suspect something sinister is afoot.
As the night flight hurtles onwards, MI5’s Madeline Delaney (Lesley Sharp) and DCI Hana's journalist half-sister Jess (Jemma Moore) try to unpick the conspiracy from the ground.
The Hijack comparisons are impossible to ignore. Even Red Eye is conscious of them, since the two productions used the same plane set. Idris Elba only disembarked for Richard Armitage to board.
But it's not just Hijack: there's The Flight Attendant, Masters of the Air, The Castaways, Yellowjackets… plane content is in the ether. The TV landscape is at peak cruising altitude. It's a curious phenomenon, since boarding a long-haul flight is an experience most are loath to do, and that's without all the shenanigans that unfold on these TV flights.
Yet Red Eye is a decent addition to the pack. Penned by Peter A Dowling, who also wrote the Jodie Foster plane thriller Flightplan, he again expertly uses this hermetically sealed commercial tube as a whodunnit pressure cooker.
The admittedly roomy plane does start to feel more like a condo, with its various hidden compartments and comfort break areas for flight attendants. But the lighting is suitably drab and the turbulence rattling enough to make the whole thing believable enough, plot notwithstanding.
Armitage and Lusi very quickly establish a cat-and-mouse rapport. Although Red Eye's narrative has the twisting logic of a pretzel, its thrills and spills override how daft it is.
Fans of Armitage's recent stuff will gobble it up. But Armitage's Hobbit and Harlan Coben star power is very closely rivalled by a fabulous turn from Lusi.
The Crazy Rich Asians star is at home in the world of plane, a project she has described in watershed terms for its Asian representation both in front of and behind the camera.
While Red Eye may not be the ultimate vehicle for explorations of immigrant belonging – Beef this isn't – these themes are deftly woven into the thriller context. Lusi's Hana drives the "model minority" stereotype off a cliff. She is a headstrong, no-bullshit woman who cares enormously about her job and tries to do right by her family, despite a prickly relationship with them.
Even once the bodies really start to pile up – including, be warned, a canine – the pace moves at enough of a clip for you to keep at bay the lingering question of believability. Only in the ad breaks is there time to wonder… In reality, wouldn't they just land the plane?
Red Eye airs on ITV1 and is available to stream on ITVX.
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Previously Deputy TV Editor at Digital Spy and, before that, a TV Reporter at The Mirror, Rebecca can now be found crafting expert analysis of the TV landscape, when she's not talking on the BBC or Times Radio about everything from the latest season of Bridgerton or The White Lotus to whatever chaos is unfolding in the various Love Island villas. When she's not bingeing a boxset, in-the-wild sightings of Rebecca have included stints on the National TV Awards and BAFTAs red carpets, and post-match video explainers of the reality TV we're all watching.
