Review, In Flight - buckle up for a thrilling ride

The Herald Scotland

a day ago

****
BETWEEN Idris Elba in Hijack, paranoia-driven Red Eye and now this new thriller from Channel 4, it is all kicking off in the skies. It is enough to make you glad the schools are going back and the holiday season in Scotland is over. No, not really, but let's go with that anyway.
Created and written by Mike Walden (Marcella) and Adam Randall (Slow Horses), the six-part In Flight has a smashing pedigree and is just the kind of muscular thriller that will power you through the week - familiar but not predictable, twisty but not impenetrable. Plus, it has the good fortune to have Katherine Kelly in the lead role.
The actor formerly known as Becky the barmaid from Coronation Street, among many other roles, plays Jo Conran, senior cabin crew and mother to Sonny, 19.
Sonny has gone off to Sofia for a holiday and to try living with his dad for a while. But a fight in a bar leads to Sonny being charged with murder and it is mum who gets the call from the distraught teenager begging to come home.
Jo goes into can-do mode, throwing herself into her son's defence and promising to get him out of Bulgaria. But with costs spiralling, money and hope are running out fast.
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With perfect timing, along comes a stranger with an offer that feels impossible to refuse. Unless Jo brings three kilos of heroin into the country from Istanbul, her son won't make it out of jail alive. 'It's one of your usual routes, so you won't be suspected and you won't be stopped,' she is told.
It is a simple enough set-up and one Jo manages to pull off, albeit shaking with nerves as she goes through security. But with Sonny's appeal coming up it's not a case of one and done. She's now the gang's prize asset - 'People look at you and they don't see a drug mule' - and the next job is Bangkok.
In Flight is a hostage drama and drug thriller rolled into one, which would be chewy enough, but Walden and Randall squeeze more out of the story. For all that Jo seems terrified, she is also coolly transactional with her 'handler', looking for any little thing that will give her an edge over him.
Kelly is terrific as the mum on the edge of a breakdown. Ditto Harry Cadby as her terrified son, pathetically grateful now that he is not being beaten up every day, but not knowing why.
The last time most of us saw Kelly, she was part of the UK-wide acting ensemble in Mr Bates vs the Post Office. Closer to home, she was also in The Field of Blood, the 2011-13 adaptation of Denise Mina's novel. Fun fact: the tale of a cub reporter, Paddy Meehan (Jayd Johnson) was filmed in The Herald's old offices in Albion Street. Alas, none of us was plucked out of the subbing pool for stardom.