Stow away your trays, please. In Flight has landed, promising fast-paced action and twists at every turn.
Just like airports, entering into a brand new crime thriller can be daunting when you're surrounded by a smörgåsbord of unfamiliar faces staring right back at you. Why is that person crying? Where do I go? What's my gate number? It's a lot.
Luckily for us, we can read about the people we are soon to meet in new dramas and get to know them before we're thrown into the chaos. We can prepare for everything. No surprises. No chaos. Crying babies? Let me introduce you to the mute button.
Here's a guide to who's who in crime thriller In Flight, which takes all the stress of an airport and adds crime and drug smuggling. In Flight is streaming now at SBS On Demand.
Jo Conran (Katherine Kelly) is a single mum working as a flight attendant when her son is imprisoned in Bulgaria for a murder he swears he didn’t commit. She is soon approached by the mysterious Cormac Kelleher (Stuart Martin), who knows all about her son and blackmails her into smuggling drugs. All just another normal day on the job, right?
Jo finds herself pulled into a murky underworld of corruption, forced to carry out orders with no escape. No matter how deep she finds herself, her mission remains the same: keep her son alive and prove his innocence. Will she be able to escape her predicament and face off against those controlling her? Or will she forget to put her own air mask on in a relentless pursuit to save her son?
Who's who in 'In Flight'?
Jo Conran (Katherine Kelly)
Jo Conran, 40, is an air stewardess blackmailed by a gangland outfit into smuggling drugs on her routes. If she fails to carry out any of her orders, then the gang promises to kill her son, a fish-out-of-water inmate serving a fifteen-year sentence in prison.
Jo is an ordinary woman in an extraordinary situation. Over the course of the series, Jo must negotiate gangsters, corrupt cops, hired killers, and an unlikely love triangle fraught with danger.
Jo is terrified, alone, and out of her depth. But she learns fast and hatches a daring plot to turn the tables on the outfit threatening her son. In Flight tells the story of a brave, resourceful, and defiant character: A mother willing to do anything to save her son.
Dom Delaney (Ashley Thomas)
Dom, 40, is a customs officer at a major London airport. He’s loyal, dedicated, and generous, but suffers from a reckless hero complex.
Dom transitioned into his role from a career in the police after a breakdown led to him leaving the force. For a while, Dom felt lost and untethered. His wife left him, and he only saw his kids at weekends. It took a brief romance with Jo to help him find his feet.
Dom’s proud of his new position and has convinced himself that getting back with his wife is the right thing to do. However, Dom still harbours feelings for Jo. She was there for him when he needed her most. Now she’s in danger, it’s his turn to repay the favour.
Cormac Kelleher (Stuart Martin)
Cormac, 40, keeps his cards close. He can be terrifying, charming, enigmatic and lethal. He’s spent a life walking the razor’s edge, pinballing from drug dealer to police informer to career criminal.
When Jo first meets Cormac, she thinks he’s the embodiment of evil: cruel, rapacious and violent. However, as they’re forced to work alongside one another, she discovers Cormac is also being blackmailed and that his motivations are similar to her own: guilt, determination, single-minded dedication to a loved one in a precarious situation.
Sparks fly, and as Cormac and Jo’s relationship evolves into a fraught, charged, transgressive romance, they team up to get revenge on their blackmailers.
Sonny Conran (Harry Cadby)
Sonny is independent and enigmatic, an outsider who keeps his cards close. He shares his Mum’s love of travel, a curious, adventurous urge, that could also be seen as an impulse to run away: from relationships, commitments, and the possibility of being hurt.
When Sonny was small, he developed an open, emotionally articulate relationship with his Mum, cemented by love and trust. However, in difficult moments, Sonny would retreat to their back garden and juggle his football. He’d bounce the ball from foot to foot for hours, a mesmerising rhythm, a silent, solitary escape, as he wrestled with his father’s absence, a rejection that burned in his bones. Sonny was raised by his Mum and his Nan. When his Nan died, he took her death hard, and his teenage years were saddled with conflicts — with Jo, school, his peers, and occasionally the police.
Sonny has a clear sense of right and wrong, but his admirable values are occasionally undermined by a rash, combustible temper. After violently defending a kid from a homophobic attack, Sonny was cautioned by the police and spent the night in a cell. Sean, Sonny’s Dad, finally showed up not long after Sonny’s 18th birthday. When Sonny discovered that Jo had been hiding his Dad’s return from him, he exploded. Furious at his Mum’s deception, and seduced by Sean’s charisma, he moved out and went to live with his Dad.
Sean lied to Sonny. He stole from him and ghosted him. The relationship was a car crash. Too ashamed to go back to Jo, Sonny maxed out his overdraft, bought an Interrail pass and sought escape through travel. One night, he found himself in Bulgaria's Sofia, alone again, drinking in a bar, attuned to the possibility of impending violence, unaware that his life was about to change.
Kayla Brown (Corinna Brown)
Kayla grew up in a strict military family and moved around a lot as a child. She learned to make friends fast and also to get over losing them, the minute it was time to pack her bags. She learned how to be a chameleon, to fit in fast, to mask her feelings with a big smile and brave face.
Kayla’s bubbly personality can make her appear naïve or carefree. However, the transient nature of her life has also given her an inner steel. She’s independent, resourceful and loyal. She knows the value of a true friend, but has spent much of her life feeling alone. After her parents discovered her pregnancy, they demanded that she get an abortion. When Kayla refused, they kicked her out. Despite all of Jo and Sonny’s problems, Kayla is drawn to them. They’re a family and, more than anything, Kayla wants someone and somewhere to feel like home.
Anton Marquis (Tony Pitts)
Anton’s life is a big ‘f you’ to everything and everyone he’s ever known. The violent poverty of his youth, the codes of his neighbourhood, the stuffed shirts who looked down their noses at him as he worked his way up through the police. Anton’s default setting is war footing. He’s paranoid, aggressive and relentless. Conflict is his comfort zone, his addiction. He prides himself on detecting people’s weaknesses, hidden vulnerabilities he can use to exploit, manipulate and control.
However, he is blind to his own fatal flaw: the scars of his upbringing still define him; no amount of wealth or power will ever be enough.
In Flight is now streaming at SBS On Demand.
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In Flight
