Season Two Blues?

(Here be spoilers for "Hijack 2")

I watched the first season of Hijack because of Idris Elba but was dubious about Season Two. Why? Because the first one involved a hijacked airplane while the new season is set primarily on a German subway.

However, because of the Berlin setting, as a German speaker, I tuned in for a hit of German now and then, and for any glimpses of the city I enjoyed visiting several times. But the show has been more like a wagon train than a UBahn. As Lincoln said about one of his generals, the season “has a case of the slows.”

Plot twists come and go; not much happens despite those twists; the hijacked passengers are curiously passive even though the hijacker has no gun. We also get pointless and frequent closeups of a claustrophobic kid on a school tour; and one person after another tells somebody else that everything’s going to be all right. Even after an explosion. And a murder. And the accidental death of a passenger who seems to have a rich back story that we never learn. I was guessing former East German spy. Actually hoping, because it would have given these episodes some heft.

Perhaps just as frustrating as the dialogue that feels AI-generated, Elba feels his wife is in danger and so he’s stashed her away in a Scottish Highlands cabin. With no gun for self-defense. Worse than that, when she’s under threat and gets a chance to flee in an SUV, she has to stop and open the hatch to confirm there’s a dead body in it because she noticed blood on a window. Wasting escape time like that is what crime fiction fans call TSTL.

I was glad to see the cast include German actress Christiane Paul, who starred in the one-season British show Paranoid, but her talent seems wasted here. And she seems bored. I’ve been bored, too, when I’m not frustrated at how dumb some of the characters are or how slow the train story chugs along. It’s eight episodes long, which is easily twice as long as it needs to be.

I’m not alone in my dim view of this series. While professional reviewers on Rotten Tomatoes think it’s an exciting, addictive thrill ride that never lets up (and similarly clichéd assessments), audience viewers on the site are often scathing.

Halfway through, I realized I was only watching out of morbid curiosity, which is not exactly hate-watching but certainly related. More than one person online has sarcastically predicted a season three set on a cruise ship. I guess season four would involve hijacking a Mississippi steamboat. Five could involve a caravan in northwest Africa.

If you’ve ever wished a terrific miniseries had stopped after one season, you might enjoy this opinion piece in The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2026/feb/19/why-tv-shows-should-be-one-season-stranger-things-killing-eve

The former crime fiction reviewer for The Detroit Free Press and a fan of mysteries and thrillers for decades, Lev Raphael is the author of the Nick Hoffman mystery series and seventeen other books in many genres.

Image by Engin Akyurt from Pixabay