Departure (Season 1, 2019)
Click to viewI actually sought this one out because I read that David Hewlett will appear in season two, so... :)
The plot is centered around a fictional crash investigation team, trying to discover the truth about what happened to a flight that crashed into the Atlantic. I've watched enough Air Disasters (aka Mayday) to recognize some elements from actual flights, such as the potential for a pilot to commit suicide and taking the entire flight with him.
We start following Flight 716 through the POV of passenger Madelyn Strong as she makes her way to the airport, and from the start we know something's not quite right. Why did she tell her driver to take her to Arrivals, when she's leaving the country? Who did she meet? We also see her perspective as the incident happens. Did the pilot lock out the co-pilot and crash it intentionally? Wait... there was an explosion, so was it accidental or on purpose? Complicating matters is the plane has gone down on the edge of a trench that's already at the edge of their dive abilities, and could go over the edge before anyone could retrieve the black boxes. Nothing like a ticking clock to drive a plot.
The flight's destination was the UK, so the fictional Transport Safety and Investigations Bureau investigates. The senior manager at TSIB asks Kendra Malley (Archie Panjabi) to lead the investigation, after being on an extended leave after her husband was killed in an accident. This slightly ruffles the feathers of Dominic Hayes (Kris Holden-Ried), former cop and now TSIB investigator who should have been in charge.
Despite the obvious trope that Kendra and Dominic were going to clash because he was passed over for the job, I was pleased they really didn't go there. It was mentioned, but more about others talking about it instead of the two of them. They seem to support each other, to the point that Kendra asks him to go stay with her son at the hospital after his life has been threatened. Kendra's son is technically her step-son, but in general, everyone calls them mother and son. The son is 18 and still traumatized by his father's death and acting out as a result. He does frequently call her by her first name, but definitely treats her as his mother. Another trope averted, as we don't get the evil stepmother and the stepchild as victim (which could have been hella awkward as step-mom is a woman of color and the son is white). He does do some stupid stuff, but it's not against Kendra; he's trying to help is his own weird hacker way.
There's always a bit of conspiracy theory stuff in a show like this, but I do admit it hits a bit different at the moment. Russian oligarchs, hackers, spy agencies, and the like all populate the plot at various points for different theories behind the crash. I mean, it's probably reality-ish, but it does play as over-the-top at times. My only big niggle in the main plot is I think it would have worked better to not show any of the details of the actual crash at the start, and instead see events as they happened (or might have happened) as the crash investigation proceeds, but that might be too many episodes of Air Disasters talking.
What really impressed me is the cast. It's a Canadian production, so "Spot the Canadian Actor" is like shooting fish in a barrel, but they got a lot of folks I recognize from genre and genre-adjacent shows. Archie Panjabi, Kris Holden-Ried, Peter Mensah, Rebecca Liddiard, Kristian Bruun, Sasha Roiz, Dougray Scott, Shazad Latif, Dmitry Chepovetsky, and Peter Outerbridge were among the "Oh hey, that's ____!" list, and there's also Christopher Plummer in one of his last roles at age 90. Season 2 looks to have a similarly familiar cast.
Speaking of season two, it starts streaming today on Peacock. This is the first time I've ever used Peacock, and while it does have certain programs in a paid level, there's a huge chunk of things available for free with ads. The ads weren't bad either, most were 30 or 45 seconds, I think the longest was 90 seconds. It also didn't do the exact same ad over and over and over. Looks like they have quite a few international shows like this one that I might want to watch, and I don't mind minimal ads, so this could be a good addition to my streaming sources.