Pop Culture Happy Hour - Hijack

Episode Date: January 14, 2026

Idris Elba is in full action hero mode in the Apple TV series Hijack. He stars as a corporate business negotiator onboard an airplane that is taken hostage by an eclectic bunch of assailants with mysterious motives. The series is very fun and very silly. Hijack just came back for a second season, so we thought it was the perfect time to revisit our conversation about the series.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

The bracing drama series Hijack is about, well, a hijacking. An airplane heading for London is taken hostage by a bunch of assailants with mysterious motives. Their problem? A brilliant business negotiator played by none other than Iges Elba is a passenger on this plane. And he's not going to let them carry out their plan without a challenge. Hijack just came back for a second season, so we thought it was the perfect time to revisit our conversation about the first season of the series. I'm Aisha Harris, and we're talking about the thrilling Apple TV.

show Hijack on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. Joining me today is the host of Weekend Edition Sunday, my fellow Aisha, Aisha Roscoe. Hey, Aisha. Thank you. I'm so glad to be here. Yes, it's so great to have you back. And also with us is Vulture TV critic, Roxanna Hadati. Welcome back to you to Roxanna.

Thank you. Very excited to talk about this supremely silly and wonderful show. Supremely silly is the perfect way to describe this show. So Idris Elba is in full action hero mode here in hijack. He stars as Sam Nelson, a corporate business negotiator on board a seven-hour flight from Dubai to London. Now soon after take off, a small group of hijackers makes its presence known, though the motive is unclear, at least for most of the series. There are no-nonsense ringleader is Stuart, who's played by Neil Maskell. With the help of the crew and his fellow passengers, Sam immediately tapped into his very particular set of skills to try to.

try and get everyone home safe and alive. This requires a lot of smooth talk, shrewd conflict-d-d-voidant tactics, and covert message-sending. Now, meanwhile, various parties on the ground are trying to understand what's going on on board, including air traffic control and the British police. Archie Punjabi plays Chief Inspector Zara Gaffor, and Max Beasley plays police officer Daniel O'Farrell. Daniel also happens to be dating Sam's estranged wife, Marsha, who's played by Christine Adams. We said, this is supremely silly. We were not lying. The series is streaming on Apple TV.

So Ayesha, let's start with you. Now, you've got Idris, you've got a hijacking. You've got all of this supposedly happening over the course of like seven-ish hours. So how did this play for you? So I have to say I watched the show because I interviewed Idris Elba. Yes, she did. About the show. So I have to put that disclaimer out there because, yes, I enjoy interviewing him.

But it wasn't just the. interview with Idris that sold me on this show. Like, I went into the show with very low expectations. I'd heard some of the reviews. I'm like, and then I think it's very difficult when you're like in a plane and like to make a hijacking work over seven hours, right? Like that is something to keep that going is very difficult. But what I think they did very well and what I think made it work for me is like, yes, you have to suspend your belief, right? Like you can't go into this like. this is realistic. But they had these little plot twists that happened at the end of every episode that drew me in and I cared just enough about the characters. And I got to the second to the last episode

and it was so, I was like, oh my gosh. Yeah. And I had to finish it. And so that to me tells me, when I'm finishing it and I don't have to. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's second to last episode. And I will tell our listeners that we might be spoiling some things, but it's not really, there's not much to spoil here, but if you want to go in completely cold, maybe, you know, come back after you've watched the final episode if you haven't yet or whatever. But yes, Ayesha, now you, you are the Idris expert in a way because you interviewed him. But Roxanna, you also wrote about this series. I did, yeah. You actually laid out a lot of great points about why this show is both supremely silly, but also just really engrossing. So tell us how this plays for you as well. I think that I

have been craving something goofy to watch in the summer. And it felt like we used to get like goofy summer stuff. We'd get like creature feature movies about like some gigantic animal that we were all afraid of. And we used to get like the shows that were a bit wackier that would air in the summertime on networks because like other shows were taking a break. So I sort of miss and crave that like low stakes absurdity and this show is very much although it's about a hijacking episodically each episode episode ends on a little bit like iisha said like a little bit of a twist a a little bit of a cliffhanger there are different characters and subplots as we talked about so i just found it very smartly constructed in a way that kept me wanting to watch and i will also

praise the fact that it's seven episodes. I think we've all got a little bit burnt out on like 13 episode streaming series that feel too stretched out. Seven episodes is exactly right. So like in terms of the formula, I think there are a lot of formula things that really work here. They hit it. They get it. And I also really enjoyed as a Middle Eastern person that this is not just like a hijacking by Middle Eastern character sort of thing. The show does something very different in terms of like what's motivating its villains, what's motivating its heroes. It is very subversive, I think, in who it presents as doing the bad stuff and who it presents

as like rising to the moment and trying to like stop this hijacking. So there are a lot of those sort of things that the show just sort of, took me away from what I expected it to be. And a lot of that I think comes down to Idris's performance. Yes. Very controlled. I mean, Idris is great at exuding control, right? Like, this is why he plays so many authority figures. It's the wire. It's Pacific Rim. It's Beast. Thank you to Idris for giving us beast. But yeah, so like he's in that mode of, I'm going to be very composed. But when the moment requires, I will explode as the moment requires. And that's just really fun to watch. It's fun to watch an actor who knows what he does so well. Do it really well. Yes, yes. And I just think

it's a good time. It really is. And Roxanna, one of the things you point out in your piece for Vulture is like one of the great things about Idris is his ability to suddenly tell people they're being stupid. Yes. And just kind of the way his eyes dart at someone saying something. so inane or there are a couple of passengers who immediately as soon as they realize there's peril. They're like, all right, what are we going to do? We got to like, we got to take this over. And he's like, no. Idris has no patience for that. Right. And I love that. And that's, and I think that's partially why this makes such a good episodic series is because he has to be very strategic. You can't just like go full on like America or whatever. I mean, obviously it's not America. But like full on.

The UK. Yeah. Yeah. UK. Or just. Just like brash and brawn. No one is asking you to make this call you no one. Right? Just because you speak the loudest doesn't mean you've got anything better to say. It doesn't mean you've thought this through. There's nothing to think through.

No, there is. You just haven't thought of it yet. Right? He's a negotiator. And that's what he's going to do. He's going to negotiate his way out of the situation. And it's always interesting to think about how the protagonist is going to get out of whatever situation. I think one of my favorite moments comes later in a series where it's,

And Idris takes a carton, water bottle carton or something like that. And he circles like a slogan on it that it says something along the lines of like, it's time to shake things up. And you just starts passing it through. And everyone seems to know what it means. And I love those moments. Like, did that work for you? Aisha, yeah.

Yeah, I think that was the thing that got me that really made it relatable. Everybody's been on a plane, right? And you imagine being on a plane with all these people you don't know, they did a very good job of everyone looking at each other from one section of the plane to the other like because you think like how would you communicate and then what would you do? And then you would always have that annoying person

who's like, I'm not going along with the plan and then you're like, oh my goodness, can this person shut up? Like, but that's going to happen right? On the plane. So I just felt like they got the feeling right and that made it accessible even though nobody's been on a hijacked plane.

Yeah. A lot of times I was like, this plane is huge. international flights tend to be really big. Some are really big. But there are sometimes where I was like, I don't know. But to your point, like, they use the structure of the plane really smartly. Like the window shades come up a lot in various episodes, but also just like the plane itself

becomes a character. And that I think is really, really well done. I would almost say that I like the stuff on the plane a lot more than I like the stuff on the ground. Oh, absolutely. I was going to ask you about that. Because one of the points you make Roxanna, which I completely agree with, is like they made it seem in the advertising, like Archie Punjabi was going to have a pretty significant role here. And she's maybe like of the people who are not on the plane who are on the ground dealing with trying to figure out what's happening on the plane, she's maybe like the third or fourth most important person. Yes. Did Archie just

have like two days on set? What happened here? It kind of seems like it. Instead, you know, we're focused on the Daniel O'Farrow character, who's the police officer, who is also dating Sam's wife or a strange wife or partner. I'm not sure if they're still together or not. Yeah. I think it's almost X. Maybe. Yeah. Almost X, but he's like trying to maybe get our back. Right. With the Gucci bracelet. The Gucci bracelet is very important. It's very, we got to talk about that Gucci bracelet. I mean, Idris Elba just saunters in with the Gucci bracelet and nothing else. And like nothing else. No other luggage. What? What were you doing in Dubai?

Maybe he was getting the Gucci bracelet in Dubai. You don't need nothing else. Sam Nelson's like, I'm going to get on this plane and I'm going to get my woman. I will say there were some tense moments that did come up on the ground. And I think that, you know, I agree that they weren't maybe quite as interesting as what's happening on the plane. So there are these two cleaner guys who are working with like the same sort of, organization or unit or whatever as the hijackers are. And they go around, like, murdering people who are related to people who are on board. And at one point, they target Sam's son, Kai, who's played by Jude Kujo. And he, like, goes to his dad's house. His dad's very luxurious

apartment. But of course it is, because, like, he's a guy who's flying to Dubai, apparently to get a Gucci bracelet. Very luxurious apartment. Then the cleaner show up. And he has to figure out, okay, how to not let them know that he's there and he sees they have guns. That had me legitimately in my seat like, oh my God. And then when they find him and that whole thing goes down and it's just I thought it was really well done. And I also thought the way that Daniel, the police officer, gets him out of that situation where he like has them do a fire alarm and then like forces them out. Like I thought that was great. It was really great.

And then the way he like signaled to Daniel because they had the argument about the bike is like, I'm going on a. by cry. I love what I'm. Everyone is so smart. Everyone is so smart. I would never think of. I would be completely useless in all of these situations. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. But the villains are legitimately scary. I really like that Simon McBernie shows up. He's such a great ominous character actor. And when he arrived, I was like, oh, things are actually going to get very intimidating. So I think there are these little, like, casting moments that are also really well done and really smart. I don't think Argy gets enough to do. But like everyone else I thought was sort of, as Aisha said, like punching above their weight class. Like it just became something more than what I expected the show to be.

Yeah. We mentioned how silly it is, but I have to ask like what to you is the most ridiculous thing about this show. Oh my gosh. My thing that I feel like that is silly is the premise of the hijacking and like, I'm like, aren't there easier ways to make money? Like, we're. It just seems like, why not just have somebody like go to a bank and, like, you know what I'm saying? Like, it just seems like a really complicated scheme to get some money that could, that has so many ways to go wrong. Well, we should, we should partially explain what that convoluted scheme is, which is basically, I guess, the stocks of the airliner, they took money out. They were betting on it going down. And so then they hijacked the plane.

And then, of course, stocks fall. So now it's like a windfall, I guess, because they did this. It's the big short on a plane. Yes. Yeah, on a plane. Yeah, you would think there'd be easier ways to do it. But I guess if you also just want to be a terrorist, like, that's a great way to go about doing it. There have to be better ways to short a stock.

That's what the big short was. Okay, so here's mine. Mine is that there only seems to be two kids on this plane. And which like have you ever been on any flight, but much less an international flight where there's only two kids on the plane? And then on top of that, they are the most well-behaved and unfazed kids of all time. I forgot about that. Oh, my God. Because if my kids were on that flight, okay, first of all, we would have all been dead because they would have been like, well, I need a fat.

Like, they would have been just a hot mess. I would have been like, be quiet, be quiet. They would not have been quiet. Yeah. It just would have been mayhem. And like, where are their snacks? Like, there are guns being brandish, people being beat in the aisles. And these kids don't like... They just have their tablets, which I respect. I feel as though that was like a missed opportunity for even more attention because it's like trying to keep a child either like from freaking out or just being too loud and annoying. Like, that's an extra layer of tension that was just waiting to be minds. But one of them briefly gets lost. And I think that's the extent. of the tension. And it's like, okay, you're getting lost on a plane, really. My favorite moment is, at a certain point, Idris notices a flag, and he goes back to first class and, like, draws the flag and then shows it around first class, and it's like, what country is this? But somehow, that's the show.

It just somehow pulls off this balance of, like, really extreme things that are also sort of, like, normal. Yeah. And it's Idris and he just sells it. Yeah. I don't know how he does it, but he sells it. Okay. Is there anything else we want to talk about here? We didn't talk about how the main pilot beat the mess out of his co-pilot. That was insane. Oh, I forgot about that. There was the affair that was happening. I mean, it was like, you know what? But then at the end, he, oh, he got it. He got it. He got it. He got it. And the best part to me was when Idris told her, Like, I normally tell people what they need to do to get them to do. But if I were in your position, I would do exactly what you're doing.

I was like, oh, my God, yes, I need a Sam Nelson on the play. That was the best part. It was so real. I loved it. Yes, yes. Well, clearly, we had a great time watching this show, the supremely silly show. And if you got a chance to check it out, you should definitely let us know what you think about hijack. You can find us at Facebook.com slash PCHH, and that brings us to the end of our show.

Roxana Haddadi, Aisha Roscoe, thanks so much for being here. This was a joy, a pleasure, and just silly fun. Yeah, glad to be here. Thank you. This episode was produced by Ramelewood and Mike Kassup and edited by Jessica Reedy. And Hello, come in provides our theme music. Thank you so much for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Ayesha Harris, and we'll see you all next time.