Nightsleeper

Carry On Up
The Cyber

Nightsleeper
UK BBC September 2024
6 episodes

You know, I barely watch many British TV shows outside of, well, Doctor Who, these days because I’m not that enamoured of them. Heck, I don’t watch many TV shows period, truth be told. But there have been a couple over the last year and this one, Nightsleeper, is something I caught about a minute or two of when my parents were watching it. It looked pretty well put together and so I thought I’d try the first episode and, frankly, I was hooked right away. This is a truly high quality thriller from the BBC and I was so impressed with it. Even though, yeah okay, it’s not that original and it feels a little like half the plot of The Cassandra Crossing and The Taking Of Pelham 123 mixed in with Bird Of Prey (which is a TV show I’ve not seen since the 1970s or early 80s… wish they’d repeat that one again).

So, a cybercrimes worker called Abby, played startlingly believably by Alexandra Roach, in the Victoria Station area of London, is called back from her holiday (she was about to get underway) because a train has been hijacked… hack-jacked, in fact. The sleeper train going from, initially, Glasgow to Euston (the route is changed over many plot twists) is sabotaged with a computer device plugged into it’s workings and it’s on a direct collision course for London, unless an anonymous terrorist group are paid so many gazillions in bitcoin. With the cybercrime chief of staff away on holidays, Abby is the one trusted to try and stop this calamity. So it’s up to her and her, somewhat dodgy (who can she trust?) team and an ex-copper on the run (due to crimes he may or may not have committed) on the train, Joe, played by Joe Roan, to try and stop the train before it takes out the London terminus.

And it’s a great little cracker of a show, for sure. It’s fast paced and, you’d wonder how a cybercrime show about stopping a train could run for six 45 minute episodes but, it does go at a fair lick with a high number of twists and mini revelations which means, well, it never gets dull. I watched the whole show in two sittings and I could have easily watched another six right after.

Now, all this being said, in terms of writing… it’s a game of two halves. On the one hand the characterisation and dialogue is phenomenally well written… everyone seems fleshed out in their shorthand kind of way and you will be caring a lot about most of the characters. On the other hand… it does run every cliché and set up in the book but, even while you can predict what is going to happen a lot of the time (including the reveal of the identity of the main antagonist, so to speak, in the last episode), it doesn’t really matter because it’s all put together so beautifully (the editing is fantastic too) and it whizzes along in quite an addictive fashion.

So, yeah, you have the resigned top cybercrime guy brought in to help out (played here by David Threlfall), the opening bag snatcher chase used as a diversion to plant the device, the miscommunications and the rival unit who end up making the situation worse than it already is, the ex-rail guy who you just know is going to have a heart attack before the end of the show (played brilliantly by the always watchable James Cosmo), the top hierarchy making decisions about sacrificing the lives on the train and not telling their operatives (as in Abby and the majority of her team), the person inside the train who knows more than they’re letting on, the one working satellite phone (everything else blocked by phone jammers), the passenger who isn’t supposed to be on the train… all that stuff and more. But I didn’t mind it one bit because it was all done in such a way that all the clichés seemed like the best logical choices for the situation.

Also... some nice camera work and, as I said, the editing is all top notch. For instance, there’s a lovely moment when the camera zooms into the black and white CCTV screen which then turns into colour and becomes the next shot. And, yes, I know we’ve all seen that done before but it was done here with such throwaway panache that you can’t help but marvel at it. Another nice thing is the first episode opened with a shot of the piano at a station in Scotland being played by a passenger and the diegetic musical notes become the non-diegetic score of the scene.

So it’s six episodes of cat and mouse with an unknown antagonist and the few deaths in it are handled in such a way that the audience really feels them (there’s no body count element at work here) and a nice finale where Abby herself is in clear and present danger from the train which is hurtling towards her at increasing speeds. I can’t see a sequel to Nightsleeper being easy to market (although I’d absolutely love to see the continuing adventures of Abby, for sure) but as a stand alone mini-series this one was pretty great. A thorough recommendation from me.