The first season of Apple TV’s Hijack struggled in a few places with herky-jerky pacing, feeling like yet another one of those shows that arguably would have made a better feature film. Almost brazenly, creators George Kay and Jim Field Smith heard those criticisms and…added an hour by going from seven episodes in season one to eight this year. Concerns that this season of Hijack would succumb to the sag that stalls so many streaming shows come to the forefront in this second episode, which spins its wheels more often than not and fills out the supporting cast in a way that could ultimately be rewarding but feels slight as a standalone experience.
There’s a bit of irony in the fact that this hour centers on a commuter train that can’t move forward and is populated by people unsure of why it’s taking so long to get to their destination. It’s the one that’s been hijacked by Idris Elba’s Sam Nelson, the centerpiece of a plane hijacking two years ago that not only left him with trauma but apparently some untied plot threads. The big reveal this week is Sam’s demand that the German and British governments find one John Bailey-Brown. Sound familiar? Played by Ian Burfield, JBB was one of the key players in Cheapside, the company that was behind the hijacking of Kingdom Air 29 for financial gains. He’s in Berlin. And, apparently, it will take a hijacking for Sam to get his hands on him.
Other than the reveal that Bailey-Brown is the focus of Sam’s plan, and a poor guy getting a bomb strapped to him, not much happens in “Control.” The most consequential developments on a season level are probably the fleshing out of key supporting players. There’s Christiane Paul as Police Chief Winter, who gets from a school concert to the control center in an amount of time that would impress Jack Bauer. It’s funny how often Hijack flirts with real-time storytelling but then does things that puncture that structure like having a woman cross Berlin in a matter of minutes. Setting aside those kinds of practical inconsistencies, Winter has a strong presence in the control center to balance Lisa Vicari’s more nervous dispatcher Berger.
Of course, the most familiar face in the control center belongs to Toby Jones, playing a mysterious figure who seems to be pulling some strings regarding the entire hostage-saving operation. Winter makes the calls at the mic, but Jones’ character looks like the wizard behind the curtain. We’ll see how that unfolds. We’ll also see how Clare-Hope Ashitey factors in as the woman that Sam was supposed to meet with at the Embassy. When she puts two and two together regarding the stopped train and Sam missing his meeting, she’s the one who reveals his identity to the hard-working folks over at the control center.
On the train itself, the essential dynamic between Sam and Otto is refined a bit. Otto is hesitant, nervous about what has to happen next to such a degree that he could become a liability for Sam’s plan. There’s an important distinction between these two made this episode: Sam is doing this for a specific reason while Otto is doing this for money. Will the guilt over the latter derail Sam’s plans? Sam tells him, “You knew what was involved when you took the money.” Did he? And how long can that kind of motive hold?
“Control” also offers another glimpse of Marsha’s life off the grid. She calls her partner DI O’Farrel (Max Beesley), a familiar face from season one, and discovers that he didn’t send the flowers that reached her remote cabin. Who did? And is it important that they were addressed to “Marsha Nelson,” drawing a connection to her estranged husband? What if what Sam is doing in Berlin is happening because he knows of a threat to Marsha? It might connect a few dots.
As for the slow action of the episode, it centers the train being stopped just before a station by the control center leaving an abandoned one in front of it on the track. Sam sees through the stunt rather quickly, confirming in a security room that the train isn’t being worked on by engineers, as Berger told him it was. He takes drastic action to get the train running again, handcuffing a briefcase to a curious passenger who pushes his way to the front of the vehicle at just the wrong time. The episode ends with the aggro passenger about to blow up in front of everyone watching the security feed at the control center. When the cameras cut, it’s supposed to imply that Sam murdered a man in cold blood when a negotiation went wrong. But anyone who’s ever seen a TV show knows it’s probably just that the feeds got cut.
Ultimately, “Control” feels like a show slowing down in its second episode instead of picking up speed. It’s well-made on a craft level, Elba remains charismatic, and the extended ensemble this year has been well cast. But it’s hard to shake the feeling that this is 10 to 15 minutes of plot in a 45-minute box. Let’s hope it starts to fill up a bit more in episode three.
Stray observations
- • Let’s use this space to profile great films and shows set on trains! This week, you should seek out 1974’s The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three, maybe the ultimate piece of fiction about a train hijacking and a clear influence on anything traveling the same tracks, including Hijack.
- • Hijack doesn’t have space for a lot of needle drops but the choice to employ John Lee Hooker’s “Boom Boom” after a man may have just been killed by a bomb is a clever one.
- • A bit of love for Toby Jones, an underrated performer who rarely phones it in. He’s been consistent for three decades, appearing in films like Frost/Nixon, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and voicing Dobby in the Harry Potter films. His best work is either in Infamous or Berberian Sound Studio.
- • Did you recognize Clare-Hope Ashitey but can’t quite place her? She played Kee in Children Of Men, the refugee at the center of the plot who becomes the hope for the future of mankind.
Brian Tallerico is a contributor to The A.V. Club.