In its exciting first season, Hijack probably dug a well that was best not double dipped. This being the entertainment industry, however, its success sent the producers racing back to it, buckets at the ready. Whether one is receptive to this clever thriller’s sophomore effort rides on a tolerance for elaborate contrivance, but since that has been present since the get-go, it likely won’t put off the already converted.
British lawyer Sam Nelson (Idris Elba) boards a subway train in Berlin, bound for a meeting at the American embassy with low-level staffer Olivia Thatcher (Clare-Hope Ashitey). It looks as though Sam has moved on with his life in the wake of his death-defying experience on a hijacked airplane, which his masterful negotiating skills helped bring to a positive resolution. The trauma of that experience may have had lasting effects, however, because he seems on edge, distrustful of everyone he encounters — whether it’s the oddly nervous train driver Otto (Christian Näthe), an ambitious former co-worker named Mei (Jasmine Bayes), or any of a hundred other random passengers. Something sketchy is in the works on the U-Bahn, and once again Sam is in the thick of things, thrust to the center of another high-stakes hijacking situation.
How likely is it that this particular bolt of lightning should strike poor Sam Nelson a second time? Not bloody, I would expect. But if you’re going to extend the Hijack franchise, given its extremely self-contained first season, you could do worse than what’s been done here. The show has an extremely difficult challenge on its hands, contriving Sam into another life-and-death crisis. Somehow it does a commendable job of it — especially in its first couple of episodes, wherein a largely visual slow-build raises questions and sows supicions…for Sam and the viewer alike. The intrigue extends beyond the A story — er, A train? — to other places, such as the transit control center where rookie dispatcher Clara (Lisa Vicari) and police chief Ada (Christiane Paul) handle the negotiations, the roving investigation of a dogged German federal police detective (Dejan Bućin), the scheming of an MI5 officer (Toby Jones), and the rustic life of Sam’s ex Marsha (Christine Adams), now living off the grid in Scotland. Of course, all the threads are connected, and Hijack — like its closely related ancestor 24, which perfected the blueprint for this kind of show — draws them all inexorably together. Unlike 24, however, Hijack doesn’t have an unwieldy running time to fill up. This is mostly for the best, since the episodes thunder along the narrative tracks at a satisfying clip, keeping the show from overstaying its welcome. On the other hand, the lack of padding hurts the supporting cast; often this type of transportation disaster gets a lot of dramatic mileage out of quirky passenger interactions, but the compressed focus here makes for a shallower web of relationships, such that promising performances from Bayes, Karima McAdams, Albrecht Schuch, and numerous others get short shrift. Really, though, this show is about watching Idris Elba outwit bad guys during a precarious action scenario — which is to say, it’s a competence-porn thriller with a deeply charismatic lead. Season two may not match up with the first, but by inventively spinning the show into a breathless new predicament for Sam to solve, it’s hard not to say at the end of it: mission accomplished.
