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Red Eye review: Richard Armitage is yet another mysterious stranger in this ridiculous ITV thriller

If the bbc has become the home of gritty realism, itv has cornered the market in barmy thrillers – and this mystery set on a plane is just about watchable, article bookmarked.

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The term “red eye”, used to refer to shorthaul flights that depart in the evening and arrive in the morning, comes from the bleary passengers who would disembark and stumble straight into the office. It does not apply – however much the team behind a new ITV six-part thriller would like you to believe – to flights from Heathrow to Beijing, which take 10 hours and have a seven-hour time difference. No matter, though, because this lack of attention to detail is far from the most ridiculous part of Red Eye .

When Dr Matthew Nolan ( Richard Armitage ) arrives back in the UK, he is promptly arrested. Sporting an inconvenient knife wound to his flank and a sore neck from a car crash, he is informed that the Chinese authorities want him returned to Beijing to answer for the death of a woman found in the wreckage of his car. But as far as Nolan can recall, he was alone at the time of the crash. Chinese-British police officer Hana Li (Jing Lusi) is ordered to escort Nolan back on the “red eye” flight (which visibly departs during daylight hours). “I haven’t lived there since I was five years old,” she tells her superior. “I have never been back and have no desire to.” But soon enough she’s on a Beijing-bound flight with a handsome, handcuffed prisoner – and only then do things really start to go wrong.

They say that potboilers unfolding over real time on a flight between the UK and Asia are like buses: you wait for ever, and then you have to review two at once (or, at least, that’s what we say in my household). Following hot on the heels of Idris Elba’s Hijack , a fun but preposterous thriller on Apple TV+ , Red Eye takes a similar approach. Locked away in this capsule hurtling across Europe, Hana and Nolan watch on as passengers start dropping dead. Part whodunnit, part conspiracy thriller – wholly ludicrous.

But ITV is committed to this sort of fare, increasingly eschewing the gritty realism of the BBC in favour of shows like After the Flood and Passenger , all of which are a bit barmy in their own way. Red Eye is anchored by some rather vapid geopolitics – China is negotiating to build nuclear power plants on British soil, so the craven government consents to Nolan’s ad hoc extradition – but really exists only to get an unlikely duo to start fighting crime at 30,000 feet.

Lusi is well cast in the lead role, bringing a tough, weary edge to a character who could have been too competent to be emotionally grounded. Armitage, on the other hand, must be desperately bored of playing the same role (good-looking but slightly mysterious bloke) in every show. It is functionally the same character as he played in Fool Me Once and Obsession , both of which were released in the last 12 months. The idea is that, over the course of a flight that involves little time to watch Oppenheimer or put on your compression socks, they go from a frosty relationship to one based on mutual survival instincts. “You left a girl to die, and your money and white privilege make you think you can get away with it,” she tells Nolan, but soon enough, they’ll be fighting baddies together.

The above quote might also give you some idea of the quality of the writing on Red Eye . Creator Peter A Dowling has previously been responsible for some less-than-lauded films (including Samuel L Jackson vehicle Reasonable Doubt , and Black and Blue with Naomie Harris), but his best-known work is the Jodie Foster thriller Flightplan , which also unfolds on an airliner. It’s a strange niche to carve, and Red Eye is necessarily more expansive, bringing in a journalist, Jess (Jemma Moore), trying to break the story without breaking her family ties, and Lesley Sharp as the head of MI5, Madeline Delaney. But the B-movie timbre remains, as though all that matters is the delivery of a few cheap thrills rather than the generation of any sustained tension or investment in the characters’ lives.

“You trust me enough to have me help you, but not enough to let me know what’s going on?” Nolan asks in frustration, as the flight spirals out of control. “Something like that,” Hana replies. In another, more ambitious version of Red Eye , the prisoner might be just another hindrance to a young detective trying to do her job. But Red Eye is not ambitious. Silly, sure; derivative, yes; but just about watchable – even if only in the way that the in-flight map is watchable after a few too many bloody marys.

‘Red Eye’ is on Sundays at 9pm on ITV

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Red Eye review – the mile-high mystery that wishes it were Hijack

Instead of Idris Elba cranking it up to 11, we have the serviceable Richard Armitage downing G&Ts while handcuffed to his plane seat. Then the bodies start to pile up …

I f it’s Sunday – or Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday or Saturday – it must be time for a serviceable new thriller starring Richard Armitage . They’re usually on Netflix and adapted from a Harlan Coben bestseller (The Stranger, Stay Close, Fool Me Once); though they’re also sometimes on Netflix and adapted from a Josephine Hart novel (Damage, renamed Obsession for TV). This time, he is serviceably thrilling on ITV1 and ITVX in Red Eye, written by Peter A Dowling (with Jingan Young taking on episode four).

Armitage is Dr Matthew Nolan, first seen stumbling out of a Beijing nightclub with a knife wound, before smashing his car into a traffic barrier in an attempt, one assumes, to avoid another stabbing. Viewerly interest piqued, we cut to him arriving at Heathrow and promptly being arrested – or whatever variation these border agents perform – for the killing of a young woman who was in his car when it crashed. She was the daughter of a Party general and, in order not to jeopardise a fragile energy deal with China, the government agrees to send him straight back there to answer the charges.

But, splutters the good doctor, he didn’t do it! There was no one in the car with him when he crashed. He spoke to the woman at the post-conference party – where many other good doctors were in attendance – and left. He’s being framed. But why? And by whom?

The officer assigned to escort him back to China on the titular red-eye flight cares not a jot. She is DC Hana Li (Jing Lusi), narked because she has been stuck with this task below her pay grade purely because she is of Chinese descent, and convinced of his guilt because, um, the border agent she met said he done it and showed her a picture of the dead woman. “Your money and your white privilege made you think you could get away with it,” she snarls as she handcuffs him to his seat. She does let him down double G&Ts to his heart’s content, though I hope she brings a little more critical thinking to her actual cases. But there is no time to dwell on this, as things are moving apace.

Four other doctors at the conference, known to have seen Nolan talking to this woman, are asked to return to China with their extradited colleague to give witness statements. Three agree, one does not. He is last seen muttering suspiciously into a phone and then getting kidnapped into a white van. Should have got on the plane, Chris.

Or should he? Because within a few hours of takeoff, the bodies are piling up. Poisonings; thumps on heads made to look like accidents. Where is Idris Elba from Hijack when you need him? Fortunately, DC Li steps up. It’s a more phone-calls-to-authorities approach than Elba’s hands-on method at first, but more action soon arrives. The pilot remains unharmed at the end of the first two episodes available for review, but as he kisses a photo of his family before takeoff we assume he is marked for death. I suspect there will be some plummeting to be done before this thing is over.

Back on terra firma, we have Lesley Sharp miscast as Madeline Delaney, head of MI5. This seems to mean moving and talking very slowly to everyone. (But I suppose this may be accurate? Most of my knowledge of MI5 comes from Spooks and they all seem to move pretty fast there, but I accept that this too is television and possibly not an infallible source.) She is against Nolan’s extradition but the Home Office is adamant that the doctor goes. There is clearly something sinister writhing beneath the surface involving our government and the Chinese, but whether this is all to do with the building of a few nuclear power stations or darker forces at work is not yet clear.

Meanwhile, wouldn’t you know it, a bloody journalist has picked up the scent and has started to investigate Nolan’s unusual return to the scene of his alleged crime. She is Li’s half-sister, Jess (Jemma Moore), and they are already on no-speaks because of some unspecified betrayal over her last story.

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That, really, ladies and gentleman, is about all there is to say about this perfectly fun, perfectly functional twist-n-conspiracy-laden tale. If you watch the first episode you will very likely watch them all and they will slip down a treat. And then you will forget about it until the next time Armitage pops up – Tuesday, say.

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Red Eye Review: ITV Thriller Starts Silly, Gets Great

Thriller fans, prepare to board.

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20 minutes in to Red Eye , a foot chase through Heathrow airport ends with a man making an impassioned plea outside a branch of Leon. He vaults over barriers like the kid in Love Actually and implores the crowd to film his testimony. Rightly wary of flash mob marriage proposals, the British holiday-going public are slow to act but get his message out: vascular surgeon Dr Matthew Nolan is being framed for murder and extradited to Beijing.

Is Nolan ( Richard Armitage ) guilty, or on the level? Is he being sacrificed by the British government to protect a valuable Chinese nuclear power deal, or is there a deeper conspiracy at work? DC Hana Li (Jing Lusi), the no-nonsense cop tasked with escorting Nolan on Flight 357, has six episodes to find out.

Li does find out in a thriller that very much rewards sticking with it through the somewhat silly early stages so it can build to a very entertaining finale with no shortage of twists. The opposite of so many other shows like it, Red Eye tightens as it goes. Instead of unravelling at the end, its threads are neatly tied up with some bonus emotional closure. Multiple unveilings and swerves lead to a thrilling last episode by which time the initially cardboardy characters will either have won you over or not obstructed your fun.

But before all that: the silliness.

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357 is no ordinary flight; it’s a jet-propelled country house from an Agatha Christie novel. (That’s metaphor, but also an unwritten Doctor Who episode I would watch). A mystery killer keeps bumping off the passengers, whose corpses get wrapped in airline blankets and stuffed into footwells and sleeping cabins while everybody else tries to enjoy their hot towel and in-flight movie. The murderer is among them but who are they, and what is their game?

In the early episodes, Red Eye ’s discovery of ‘one, two, no wait three , oh FFS you’re not telling me there’s another one?’ dead bodies verges on farce. After that’s done with, the real intrigue can begin.

The real intrigue is the investigation, or more properly, investigation s . DC Li’s in-flight sleuthing is matched on the ground by that of MI5 director Madeleine Delaney ( Lesley Sharp looking sharp ), and an aspiring journalist with a personal link to the story. The split of revelations for each of the three is handled well and importantly, happens fast. Playing out almost entirely mid-flight from London to Beijing, there’s very little waiting around for everybody to catch up with the latest developments or for things the audience already knows to be relayed down the phone.

Red Eye ’s fast pace is all to its credit. One revelation has barely sunk in before we’re onto the next and the next and the next. There’s very little time to reflect, which is generally how thriller fans like it, and certainly for the best in a show that favours lines of the “cut the crap or I’ll go full Snowdon on this” and “are you going to hide in a bottle or help me catch this bastard?” variety. The dialogue is perfunctory and as lacking in personality as the characters, but none of that matters because Red Eye is all about plot.

That’s not to denigrate the cast. Richard Armitage is as reliable as ever in the role of Nolan, but doesn’t have much to work with in terms of character. After spending six episodes in Dr Matthew Nolan’s company, my familiarity with the man extends to knowing that he’s a) a doctor, and b) a vegan. Jing Lusi’s performance feels boxed in by the generic dialogue, but does get the chance to escape with a plot thread rooted in Li’s British-Hong Kong family history. Lesley Sharp adds some gravitas, and was clearly born to play the head of MI5 dressed in a series of chic suits and silk blouses.

That plot, it’s worth saying, involves some crossover with screenwriter Peter A Dowling’s previous air-set thriller, the Jodie Foster -starring 2005 feature film Flightplan . In essence, planes: easier to hide in than you’d think! Like the first series of BBC One’s submarine-set murder mystery Vigil , there’s a backstage tour frisson about being allowed down the ladders and behind the flapping airplane curtains whence emerges your warm can of Britvic orange juice.

The rest of the story is just what you’d imagine: Chinese ministers, MI5/MI6 rivalries, the CIA special relationship, sniper assassins and sleazy Beijing nightclubs where people go “only when [they] want to disappear”. You’ve seen it and enjoyed it all before, though probably without such a decent lead as Lusi, and without the specifically British East and Southeast Asian characters and stories, which make for involving drama and are long overdue on our screens.

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All in all, a good time had. Ready to board?

Red Eye is streaming on ITVX .

Louisa Mellor | @Louisa_Mellor

Louisa Mellor is the Den of Geek UK TV Editor. She has written about TV, film and books for Den of Geek since 2010, and for…