TV shows can make flying on airplanes a matter of life and death. Just ask Idris Elba. Or the passengers on Oceanic Flight 815 on Lost, or Flight 828 in Manifest. Don’t forget William Shatner’s experience in Nightmare at 20,000 Feet. Between terrorist hijackings, mysterious disappearances, and gremlins, there’s enough drama involving air travel to give anyone anxiety about flying. Rarely, though, are poor writing and plot holes the true horror. Unfortunately, these converge like a perfect storm to make ITV’s Red Eye a bumpy ride.
Written by Peter Dowling, this six-partner series is the newest addition to the mile-high club. It has all the makings of a great show: espionage, international political intrigue, East-West tensions, and assassinations on air and land. But despite all of that, Red Eye just doesn’t take off.
The premise is simple. Dr Matthew Nolan (Richard Armitage) is stopped by border security upon arriving back in the UK from Beijing. He’s accused of murdering a Chinese woman he met at a conference. Despite his loud and very public protests, Nolan’s forcibly extradited to China on the next available flight. Hong Kong-born DC Hana Li (Jing Lusi) is miffed that she’s saddled with babysitting duties when she’s tasked with escorting Nolan to Beijing.
Nolan drowns his sorrows with G&Ts in Business Class on the long flight. But soon after the first in-flight meal is served, the bodies start piling up, starting with a luckless passenger who eats a vegan meal meant for Nolan. Then a dog travelling in business class dies, followed by Nolan’s medical colleagues, who were also forced to return to China as eyewitnesses.
While Nolan and Hana play DIY CSI and examine the bodies, a hulking, hooded figure hiding in the plane’s belly comes out to loom sinisterly whenever the plot needs livening up. Possibly the most distressing thing he does is mess up the plane’s onboard WiFi. But even with all of this happening, the pilot refuses to turn the damn plane around.
Meanwhile, Hana’s journalist sister, Jess, discovers a medical institution doing shady things that’s apparently connected to the conference that Nolan and the other doctors attended. There are also vague rumblings about a Sino-British nuclear deal that’s behind MI5’s interest in keeping Beijing happy by extraditing Nolan.
Honestly, these are all ingredients for an exciting and explosive story. Except the momentum is dragged by the script’s compulsive need for characters to keep updating each other. Every episode finds Hana telling her MI5 allies, and her sister, about the latest development on the airplane, while they update her on what’s been happening on land. Forcing viewers to listen to everyone constantly recapping what’s just happened would make anyone want to jump out the nearest airlock.
Then there’s the fact that the plot points are so obviously set up and telegraphed that they’re visible from miles away. The sheer incongruity and lack of realism are actually painful. What air steward would put a tray of food on the floor in Business Class? A sequence which was only there for the dog to conveniently nibble the spiked food and die.
Probably the most glaring plot hole is that the British government has the right – and stomach – to extradite its own citizens as depicted. In Episode 1, after he disembarks from his flight from China, Nolan’s told that he has no legal rights as a British citizen just because he hasn’t walked through immigration at Heathrow. This bizarre explanation has whipped up heated debates on Reddit and nobody’s buying it.
If you want to see a truly good Red Eye, watch the 2005 movie of the same name. Starring Cillian Murphy and Rachel McAdams, the movie succeeds where the TV series falls short. The movie tells a thrilling story about a woman in mortal danger from a stranger seated next to her. In just 1.5 hours, Red Eye, the movie, deftly builds tension in the claustrophobic space between two economy seats.
Meanwhile, Red Eye, the series, limps around in circles when it should soar. After all, there are so many modern-day dangers involved in travel, and twenty-plus years after 9/11, TV writers are embracing perils in the sky with gusto. Yet this series has plot holes so big an airplane could fly through them. Red Eye isn’t exactly bad, it’s just intensely bland. The overall experience is like eating cheap airline food. Digestible but nothing memorable. Give me Cillian Murphy being threatening on a plane any day.
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