In Flight ★★★½

The first instalment of this six-part British crime thriller sets out to batter the audience, not only into submission but also out of their willingness to latch onto any skerrick of hope.

It’s a brutal yet thoughtful opening gambit, which begins like an impressionistic memory or a hazy recap from a previous episode you haven’t seen: English flight attendant Jo Conran (Katherine Kelly) finds herself in the Bulgarian capital of Sofia, where her estranged 19-year-old son, Sonny (Harry Cadby), has been arrested for the murder of a young local man after a bar fight.

“I didn’t do anything,” protests the wan Sonny, who definitely doesn’t look like he’ll survive this remake of Banged Up Abroad. Single mother Jo diligently hires a lawyer and endures the media attention, but the real crisis is the appearance of the utterly menacing Cormac Kelleher (Stuart Martin). A fixer for an anonymous drug syndicate, he coolly explains that Jo, who flies constantly and is mostly ignored by British customs, must smuggle heroin for his employers or Sonny will be murdered in jail. Cormac demonstrates his ability to do so with horrifying ease.

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Creators Adam Randall (Slow Horses) and Mike Walden (Concordia) are interested in the psychology of resilience. Jo doesn’t appear to have a hope against the always-lurking Cormac, but she has no choice but to find a way out. A weekly smuggling run, even with the specially made suitcase and instructions Cormac provided, means the odds are against her lasting the 15 years Sonny is facing. Every sniffer dog, their husky panting echoing in her ears, could mean her arrest and her son losing his life.

Kelly has done fine work in Happy Valley, Gentleman Jack and the like, but this is a showcase performance and she carries the series. Her Jo is a realist, accepting that she has to co-operate, but she takes the blackmail and death threats personally. She’s smart and resourceful, even with discovery constantly hanging over her. Her resistance isn’t always heroic. Does she involve her married ex-boyfriend Dom Delaney (Ashley Thomas), a customs officer, with good intentions or cruel expediency? What cost – or who – is acceptable to keep Sonny safe?

As with SBS On Demand’s Code of Silence, the 2025 British crime thriller about a deaf woman whose lip-reading skills get her entangled in a police investigation, In Flight focuses on the kind of character traditionally left on the storytelling margins. Bending Jo is a task Cormac is meant to simply tick off. “This is your life now,” he tells her, “make peace with it.” But her defiance and subterfuge are genuine, and decidedly vengeful. Jo and Dom start following Cormac, piecing together his shadowy life, and you realise that in another dimension she would have made a dogged investigator.