A little later than it's US airdates, "The Flight Attendant" made it across the Atlantic and landed on Sky. In the hands of one of the uber producers, Greg Berlanti, Christopher Bohjalian's novel is turned into a fun international thriller which doesn't outstay its welcome - although I fear that running to a second season may do just that.
An alcoholic flight attendant, Cassie (Kaley Cuoco) wakes up in a Dubai hotel room alongside the dead body of Alex Sokolov (Michiel Huisman), a passenger on her flight with whom she enjoyed the previous evening. Unable to remember what happened, Cassie panics, cleans the hotel room and returns to work. With the FBI confident but unable to prove that she is the killer, Cassie is forced to investigate the murder herself and, in the process, begins to deal with the childhood trauma that led her to alcohol dependence.
Mostly, it's a fun, light, frothy time. Cuoco is excellently cast as Cassie and is ably supported by Huisman, who is charming, by Rosie Perez and Zosia Mamet as her friends and, most valuably, by the peerless Michelle Gomez, who joins as the entertainingly psychotic Miranda Croft. The murder mystery aspect of the story is a decent yarn, with a number of red herrings and misdirections. I enjoyed the slightly otherworldly aspect, with Cassie continually being drawn into a strange headspace and interacting with Huisman and how the show deals with her trauma using that method. I liked that it was a self-contained story.
All of which makes the idea of a second season a bit unpalatable. There's a finite amount of time that you can get away with amateur sleuthing, before it becomes farcical and this first season does an excellent job of coming right up to that line and then stopping. I certainly worry going forward that more is less.
However, that's criticism for a show that doesn't exist yet and I should be focusing on what we've actually seen, which was a fun, funny story with some excellent performances.
An alcoholic flight attendant, Cassie (Kaley Cuoco) wakes up in a Dubai hotel room alongside the dead body of Alex Sokolov (Michiel Huisman), a passenger on her flight with whom she enjoyed the previous evening. Unable to remember what happened, Cassie panics, cleans the hotel room and returns to work. With the FBI confident but unable to prove that she is the killer, Cassie is forced to investigate the murder herself and, in the process, begins to deal with the childhood trauma that led her to alcohol dependence.
Mostly, it's a fun, light, frothy time. Cuoco is excellently cast as Cassie and is ably supported by Huisman, who is charming, by Rosie Perez and Zosia Mamet as her friends and, most valuably, by the peerless Michelle Gomez, who joins as the entertainingly psychotic Miranda Croft. The murder mystery aspect of the story is a decent yarn, with a number of red herrings and misdirections. I enjoyed the slightly otherworldly aspect, with Cassie continually being drawn into a strange headspace and interacting with Huisman and how the show deals with her trauma using that method. I liked that it was a self-contained story.
All of which makes the idea of a second season a bit unpalatable. There's a finite amount of time that you can get away with amateur sleuthing, before it becomes farcical and this first season does an excellent job of coming right up to that line and then stopping. I certainly worry going forward that more is less.
However, that's criticism for a show that doesn't exist yet and I should be focusing on what we've actually seen, which was a fun, funny story with some excellent performances.
