Idris Elba's Apple TV+ Thriller 'Hijack' Commandeers A Release Date

Idris Elba may have put to bed any James Bond rumors with his Luther: The Fallen Sun refusal to drink a martini, but just because he has no interest in being handed a license to kill or a double-0 number doesn't mean he's about to retire for being an action hero. Case in point: Elba's new series on Apple TV+, Hijack, where he will find himself going from hard-nosed business negotiator to dealing with a hostage situation 40 thousand feet in the air, as he is tasked to defuse a potentially explosive situation in just seven hours.

TV series rarely do "real-time" adventures, except perhaps as a single episode one-off. The notable exception to this rule was the American program 24, a post-9-11 terrorism fantasy series on Fox, which took advantage of the standard broadcast season's standard 24-episode format to play out "a day in the life" of Keifer Sutherland's Jack Bauer. With Hijack, Apple TV+ is the first to resurrect the concept of telling thriller-type stories as a season-long gimmick, with the show's seven-episode season, each representing one hour of events.

Remarkably, none of the high-profile streaming services have attempted this format since the shift in the entertainment landscape binge-model release strategies and seasons that run 6-10 hours tops. 24 was initially a hit due to its structure, but it quickly became a different sort of unreality, as a character who does not sleep or use the loo in 24 hours seems a bit off. Having an action-thriller dramatized in real time over a far more realistic span seems a no-brainer format, either as a single release drop of all episodes or week to week.