Kapningen

As the apparent next series after STHLM Requiem, I was hopeful that it would be its equal. Kapningen has the same actors but not the same action, excitement or anticipation that was found throughout STHLM Requiem. When dealing with hijacking, terrorism, and intrigue a show builds up a crescendo, not unlike a heart beating faster and faster until the final explosive moments. Kapningen has no such build up. It is acting at the pace of a sleeping sloths heart. I believe that if not for the presence of the actors for whom I had grown to like, I would not have even bothered to venture watching the show's second episode. As befitting a great ensemble weekly piece (such as Breaking Bad, The Wire), I would look forward to the next week's installment with high anticipation. Sadly, I am not really looking forward to next Thursday to watch the latest installment of Kapningen. Instead my mind is on, "What's for dinner next Thursday."

Some familiar faces but that doesn't save this from disappointing. Adam Lundgren (The Restaurant), Jonas Karlsson (Beck). Ana Gil de Melo Nascimento (Jordskott).

It starts of ok, but it long and drawn out and at the end I hadn't much of an idea as to why the plane was hijacked. The pilot was either acting badly or reflecting how somebody in that situation would react.

Ana Gil de Melo Nascimento I found very poor.

Not much of it made any sense.

When a Nordic Airlines flight to the USA is hijacked, a team of Swedish investigators must race against time to unmask the mysterious hijackers before they bring the airplane down or the US military shoot it out of the sky.

Over all the story has potentials, but is then somehow shifted back in forth with a timeline shift. The actors are over all known, and I have seen them in other movies, series, but in this case, the show's anticipation is not met.

A plane is Hijacked. On the outside it's a A330, in the cockpit it looks like a 4 motor Boeng 747 with sticks, and in the ADSB pings, it reports as an A320. The interior is of an A330, but somehow it changes. Airbus have joystick sticks, Boeng has sticks from floor with a steering wheel.

6 episodes of 45 minutes are slow and very dramatical, with not much action, and I almost quit every episode.

When the crew goes down to the baggage room, the inside looks to be of an A380 or B747, as the higt of the ceiling is not that great for Airbus aircrafts.

This six-part Swedish drama series opens with a Lebanese lecturer starting to give a talk about Middle Eastern music. He doesn't get far as he is arrested; it is claimed he has links to terrorist although he denies it. Sometime afterwards strange things start to occur on a flight from Stockholm to San Francisco... The instruments briefly blackout and when they return a message warns of dire consequences if the lecturer isn't released along with information regarding 'Operation Tennyson', an operation the security services deny any knowledge of. Will the police and security services and the flight crew be able to solve the problem before the plane reaches US airspace where authorities have threatened to shoot it down?

I thought this was a taut little thriller. It might not be the most original and it does require some suspension of disbelief but this is forgivable as, once things get started, the level of tension remains high. The cast does a solid job bringing the story to life. At only six episodes in length the series doesn't outstay its welcome and when it is over it does feel nicely wrapped up. Overall a solid series; perhaps not a must watch but still worth giving a go.

These comments are based on watching the series in Swedish with English subtitles.

This was a series that made you use your brain, which I like. It was complicated, running in two different years with flashbacks to 2014 that explained some of the events happening in the present day.

There was one weakness. I guessed who the hijack baddie was in the first episode and it turned out I was right. However, these actions were set against those of the Swedish secret services who'd behaved just as disgracefully and had engendered the events of the present.

The action was fast paced and the acting was competent. It helped that this was a spin off from STKHM Requiem, so we knew the characters.

I definitely recommend this.