Did Idris Elba Deserve That Emmy Nomination for ‘H/JACK’?

Taken at face value, Apple TV’s action thriller H/JACK looks like nothing more than a formula terrorist on a plane thriller. Even the conceit of making the series length (seven hours) the exact duration of the international flight taking off from Dubai and headed to London, seems like a gimmick. Of course to form a full opinion of a show beyond its synopsis, you actually have to watch it. Apparently a lot of people (including myself) did and found more of worth than perhaps one might expect. Certainly the Television Academy did when the voting body nominated Elba (to the surprise of more than a few) for Outstanding Leading Actor in a Drama Series.

Full disclosure, I have a full-on man crush on Idris Elba (I still insist he should be the next James Bond, age be damned). I even watched that silly time-killer thriller he made (Beast) where he fought off a lion in Africa by punching it in the nose (I doubt this works in real life, even if you are as stout as Idris Elba). And let’s face it, there’s this strange sense that Elba, despite being extremely talented, famous, beloved, and impossibly handsome doesn’t seem to get the types of roles he deserves. It’s truly mystifying as to why Idris Elba isn’t a bigger star. There is absolutely nothing missing from the package. 

He seemed to be on the cusp of greater prestige when he won Golden Globes in 2016 for both TV’s Luther and Netflix’s remarkable film Beasts of No Nation (still his finest two hours). But since then, his career has remained on simmer instead of boiling. 

So, when I pressed play on H/JACK, I thought, “here we go again, another project unworthy of its lead, but made watchable because of him.” The surprise of H/JACK is that while no one would confuse it with high art, it is far better than one might expect. It is briskly paced, appropriately claustrophobic, genuinely thrilling, and, to no surprise, the leading man delivers. 

What’s surprising is that the series asks more of Elba than one might expect. Due to his notable physique, Elba’s sharp mind is often not taken full advantage of in many of the projects he undertakes. H/JACK turns that expectation on its head. Elba’s physical presence is a given, but H/JACK gives him the part of Sam Nelson, a highly-skilled business negotiator that has to be clever, industrious, and duplicitous when necessary, all while keeping us, the audience, inside his constantly ticking head. From nearly the beginning it’s not entirely clear whether Elba is playing a stereotypical hijacker stopping hero, or a guy who just wants to get home to his family alive. What I particularly admired about the series is that as the episodes move forward, you find both motivations to be valid. You don’t have to choose. Like with many complex circumstances, multiple, competing ideas can be true at the same time. 

Elba’s character wants to help the passengers, including the ones he doesn’t like (there’s a bit of tense comedy mined from Elba’s frustrations with his fellow travelers). But his main motivation is self-centered in the most humane way—he just wants to get to the ground and reunite with his wife (who is now with another man—a fact that Elba’s character clearly hasn’t accepted) and his son. 

Look, I’m not arguing H/JACK is United 93 complex, but it’s a whole lot craftier and trickier than it needs to be. And I don’t believe it would work without the superb performance by Elba, a turn that is both external (when talking the hijackers and passengers into more reasonable positions), and internal, when silently plotting his next move. 

The latter is the part I enjoyed the most. Elba is constantly gaming in his head what is the next and/or right move. Considering the target for his next decision is moving constantly, Elba is required to be quick on his feet, convincing to both hijackers and passengers, and willing to adjust on the spin of a dime. H/JACK may very much be a genre piece, but it’s a pretty damn good one,.

In many ways, you could refer to H/JACK as exhibit A in showing his intellectual capacity. Unfortunately, on three separate occasions the series lapses into conventional mano y mano territory—twice between Elba and the head terrorist, who is well played by Neil Maskell, but looks more like a guy who might win a bar fight, but not a hand-to-hand with Idris Elba. The show goes awry one other time when Elba has a brief physical altercation with a different  terrorist, and has more trouble with an out-of-shape man at least ten years his senior than he should. It’s more than a bit lazy that this otherwise cracking thriller of a series asks us to believe that Elba couldn’t fell Maskell or his partner in air crime with a single blow, but furthermore, it’s doubly disappointing because the scraps are arguably unnecessary. Certainly the first and the last one are. You could make a case for the middle altercation, but it’s hardly a slam dunk. 

For the roughly seven hour running time of H/JACK, Elba is shown beating the terrorists (and a handful of pretty stupid passengers) with craft, brains and guile. Show creators George Kay and Jim Field Smith show excellent restraint for much of the series, but the gunplay in the final episode makes what happened just before, which is both thrilling and completely satisfying, into a false ending. 

H/JACK is so much better off when Elba is shown thinking, not verbalizing, not speaking in voiceover (which would have been an easy crutch to lean on), but just running through all the possibilities in his head with limited resources and most significantly, limited time. And it’s fascinating just to look at him and all but hear the wheels spinning in his head. When he does speak, he’s playing the voice of reason, but not always in an honest fashion. He’s coming up with the words that need to be said to whomever his audience is. He is walking a tightrope, held on one end by the terrorists and the other by the frightened passengers. 

I don’t want to dwell too much on the mistakes H/JACK makes when it does so many other things well. The team on the ground managing the crisis (particularly Archie Panjabi and Eve Myles) are also quite excellent and do well in adding tension to the plight in the air. 

But of course, it’s Elba who carries the day. And he does so not by playing a selfless one-dimensional hero. There’s a terrific scene in episode three where Elba tells an injured terrorist that he doesn’t really care about him or anyone else on the plane. All he cares about is getting home to his broken family. At the same time he helps the man make one last phone call to his mother—seemingly a kind gesture. But then we find that Elba’s true purpose is using the man’s failing health and desperation to sneak a message to the ground. In doing so he alerts his own family to the danger he is in, which in turn fortifies the concerns of government officials tracking the plane’s erratic maneuvers and inconsistent communication. 

Throughout H/JACK, Elba is continually working on two levels. Yes, if his efforts to get home help save the lives of the innocent people aboard, he’s certainly in favor of that outcome. But Elba plays the character like a real human being. If others benefit from his industriousness, all the better. But H/JACK is about a man who is not completely selfless while being brave, it’s about a man who wants to get back to his family, and will do so by any means necessary. 

For nearly the entire series, Elba has sold you on this perspective. And then, after all the evidence he has provided regarding his own desires, he stands up, willing to take a bullet for another man. A man he doesn’t even like. And you are convinced that he would do so, despite all the previous evidence to the contrary. Why? Because it’s in the eyes. Elba himself appears surprised by his own action. The look on his face is that of someone who is ever so slightly out of their own body, discovering something about themself that they were heretofore unaware of. That they are more than they thought they were. And also because he’s just that good, he makes you believe. 

What Elba does in H/JACK is more than the show needs to be an enjoyable ride. He adds depth, complexity and genuine emotion to a well-made series that, due to its premise, can’t help but feel familiar. 

And that’s why Elba deserves his Emmy nomination. He elevates both the form and the function of H/JACK well beyond what anyone would have reason to expect.