Reviews for Season 2 of Hijack are significantly more polarizing than the acclaimed first season.
Not nearly as good, in my opinion. The plot less clear. Some episodes dragged.
I did like the very end of the finale. A smart conclusion.
Two years after the flight KA29 hijacking, Sam Nelson (Idris Elba) finds himself caught in another hostage crisis, this time on a Berlin underground U-Bahn train.
Idris Elba can do no wrong for me. He’s the main reason to watch.
Former army intelligence officer Michael Kohler, … has been in hiding for most of his adult life after absconding with $20 million during a mission in Libya.
All the right pieces — but to me it seemed they tried too hard. Perhaps a bit more humour would help.
Set eight to ten years after the events of the first season, Jonathan Pine (Tom Hiddleston) is living a quiet life as “Alex Goodwin,” a low-level MI6 surveillance officer in London. His peace is shattered by a chance encounter with a mercenary from his past, pulling him into a new mission in Colombia.
The Mission: Pine must infiltrate the operation of Colombian arms dealer Teddy Dos Santos, who is smuggling weapons to train a private guerrilla army intended to overthrow the Colombian government.
The Twist: A major mid-season revelation confirms that Richard Roper (Hugh Laurie) is still alive, having faked his death in Egypt. He has been rebuilding his empire from Colombia and was the true mastermind behind Teddy’s operation.
The Stranger (2015) is another excellent, but short, novel by the master of the intriguing plot.
A stranger shows up at a bar tells Adam Price a devastating secret about his wife, Corinne.
… But that is only the beginning of Adam’s problems.
Corinne explains that there is more to her deception than appears on the surface, and wants to meet Adam alone to discuss it. She never shows up for the meeting and seems to have disappeared.
More secrets are discovered to have been revealed or leveraged by The Stranger, threatening to not only ruin lives, but end them
The novel was made into a British television limited series of the same title that was released on Netflix in January 2020.
It looks like the TV show is very loosely based on the book.
The hive mind happily accommodates the wishes of those who remain unaffected, but admits that it will ultimately seek to assimilate them when it figures out how to do so. Carol is adamantly against their efforts as she searches for a way to reverse the Joining. …
It wraps up Dec. 23rd on Apple TV.
Personally, I would probably have gone all Samba Schutte as Koumba Diabaté. He definitely understood the assignment. 😀
Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones made a memorable cameo as himself in episode 9 where he shared a powerful, emotional monologue about how his early oil and gas ventures. His genuine emotion, including tears, made the scene incredibly impactful, with many feeling he stole the show from the main cast.
I understand there’s some truth to the depressing environment of the PetroToxin industry down there.
Landman is set within the world of oilfields in West Texas, where “roughnecks and wildcat billionaires are fueling a boom so big it’s reshaping our climate, our economy, and our geopolitics.”
The lead character, Tommy Norris (Thornton), can be abrasive, as is the out-of-town lawyer Rebecca Falcone investigating a fatal accident early in the season.
Rotten Tomatoes approval 78% based on 37 critic reviews. That sounds about right.
I can see why some wouldn’t like this show. The only positive role model for women is Paulina Chávez.
On the other hand, the men are pretty much all disreputable and/or immoral, as well.
Colm Feore as Nathan, an oil company attorney, is about the only man you can cheer for — aside from Billy Bob Thornton.
Helen Mirren as Elizabeth Best, a retired MI6 officer
Pierce Brosnan as Ron Ritchie, a retired twice-divorced union leader
Ben Kingsley as Professor Ibrahim Arif, a retired psychiatrist
Celia Imrie as Joyce Meadowcroft, a retired trauma nurse
Ibrahim is my favourite, for sure.
Four pensioners, friends at a retirement village in Kent, England decide to solve murders as a retirement hobby.
This book is a little different. They investigate a crypto scheme. Not a bad plot.
In her Library Journal review, Liz French wrote, “The crime, though ingeniously plotted, with many red herrings, is not the main attraction. It’s the growing love and respect among the Thursdays and their kith and kin, including a few criminals and cops, that is the biggest draw.”
Rick McCharles 