@TheChosenTwo
This is the begining of the funny review of Red Eye in the spirit of quotation and encouraging people to subscribe the Times!
"Great dramas are Michelin-starred, Red Eye is a kebabYou’ll enjoy this improbable tale of a doctor trapped on a long-haul flight. You will also have forgotten it within a month Hugo Rifkind
Friday April 26 2024, 5.00pm BST, The Times
The very best of TV dramas are like a Michelin-starred feast. They are intricate, unexpected, delicate, thought-provoking and requiring the rarest creative skills, sometimes close to genius. They don’t come along often, but when they do, for me, that’s what this job is all about. Sometimes, though, you don’t want any of that. Sometimes you want a kebab.
Red Eye is a kebab. It is set on a plane en route to Beijing, and people keep mysteriously dying. By the time the third or fourth person has mysteriously died, at which point they are only over, say, Turkey, you may wonder why the plane doesn’t just land. Although to that I would say: “Shut up and stop causing trouble.”
Our star here is Richard Armitage, who plays Matthew Nolan, a British doctor with brooding good looks except when he reminds you of Lord Percy from Blackadder. Probably he can’t help it. We meet him, anyway, when he’s just returned from a medical conference in China, where he is suspected of committing a murder. Immediately, British authorities put him on a plane back. Could that happen, legally? Look, you’re doing it again. Sit back down. We have a long flight ahead.
Nolan arrives back with a stab wound and a high level of anxiety. It will be a long time before we find out why he has either of these, much as we may reasonably assume them to be connected. Our not finding out, for a while, involves a very carefully scripted dance of people ending conversations before he has a chance to tell them. There’s skill in this. Kebab skill. But skill."
The whole thing was brilliantly written - and had fabulous lines like that last one that really made me laugh "There’s skill in this. Kebab skill. But skill." I thought it was a really joyful piece of journalism that was spot on and I enjoyed reading it as much as watching Red Eye!
The conclusion was basically that sometimes you do want a kebab and a kebab can be enjoyable.