If any readers can still remember 2024’s first iteration of Red Eye, they will have an approximate idea of the kind of things they can expect from this second instalment, in short, fast-food drama tarted up with a bit of political skulduggery. Screenwriter Peter A Dowling has cunningly identified a niche in the market for aviation-centric thrillers, though where last year’s model was set almost entirely on board an aircraft en route to Beijing, this one is mostly locked inside the American Embassy in London.
Aviation-wise, the McGuffin du jour is an RAF aircraft which has mysteriously crashed, and the secretive ramifications thereof. It’s a new-fangled thing called the D300 (though it looks very like that Airbus that Tom Cruise clung to the outside of in Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation). It was flying towards the US East Coast when disaster struck, shortly after ground control warned that there were Russian warships on exercises in the immediate vicinity. The plane promptly plummeted into the sea, killing two crew-members.
Thus Mr Putin’s colleagues inevitably found the finger of suspicion pointing in their direction, though what actually happened to the plane remains shrouded in mystery. But since the D300 is the result of an Anglo-American development programme which has had vast sums of money funnelled into it, involves various giant corporations and has created thousands of jobs, the issue is a political hot potato.
Anyway, fast forward to now, and the new US ambassador to Britain is hosting a huge meet-and-greet party at the garish US Embassy in Nine Elms. Ambassador Tillman (Trevor White) is a rather sleek and slimy specimen, clearly not to be trusted, and evidently harbours grandiose political ambitions (like becoming US President, for instance).
However, this boozy welcoming bash turns ugly when it transpires that a sinister assassin has infiltrated the embassy (some relation to the sinister assassin who infiltrated an aircraft in the first series?). At first it isn’t quite clear whether a rather elderly gentleman with a fondness for whisky, who has plummeted several floors before colliding catastrophically with the floor of the lobby, fell or was pushed, but subsequent corpses leave no room for doubt.
Luckily help is at hand. Martin Line of Duty Compston is the dramatically-named Clay Brody, the head of security at the embassy, and he’s soon doing his dour and bossy best (in a thick Scottish accent) to take control of the situation. This brings him into a frosty partnership with police detective DS Hana Li (Jing Lusi, pictured above with Compston), who also starred in series one. She’s heading the Metropolitan Police investigation into the death of a US courier who had brought a top-secret diplomatic bag to Heathrow, only to be slipped a dose of strychnine by a man pretending to be a cleaner. Turns out she and Compston had a bit of uncomfortable shared history at police college, but now have to get over it and hunt the killer.
It all ticks along quite entertainingly, though by the time you get to episode four you’ll probably be wondering how on earth they’re going to stretch it out to six. Various devices are employed, like a side-plot about a time bomb that threatens to obliterate several key characters (such as Lesley Sharp’s MI5 supremo Madeline Delaney) and some absurd mistaken-identity shenanigans which push proceedings to the edge of farce. And there’s also a brief though influential comeback by Richard Armitage (pictured above), whose Dr Matthew Nolan was the main character in the previous series. It’ll be intriguing to see how far Mr Dowling can go with his politics, planes and poppycock formula.
Red Eye is on ITV1 on Thursdays. All episodes available on ITVX
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