It’s a little bit Bodyguard (Jed Mercurio’s, not Whitney Houston’s) because there’s some terrorist activity on a train. It’s a little bit Idris Elba’s Hijack because the train is – well, hijacked. It’s a little bit 24 because it plays out in real time. And it’s a little bit Speed (for those old enough to remember) because a madman (or several) holds the fates of various passengers in his hands, and only one man and one woman in an unlikely pairing can save them. It is the new six-part drama from the BBC called Nightsleeper. It is set on the Glasgow to London overnight train and it is fantastically dreadful.
Most of it involves members of the cast standing round and staring doomily at a device that has been discovered attached to some wiring in the conductor’s cabin floor. “Is it a bomb?” asks more or less everyone as they come through the door. Personally, were I in a position of authority on the train, I would have firmly locked it behind me each time I entered, so as not to let every passerby in on the news that the train is now being remotely controlled by a person (or persons) who has also jammed everyone’s phones and is probably not in it for shits and giggles. They have cut off communications with the driver, too. I don’t know why the conductor can’t go up the train and bang on the door. But such niggles will soon be subsumed by much larger absurdities.
