Idris Elba, at the end of June, was trapped on a hijacked plane. With his negotiating skills in the business sector, he tried to ensure that passengers arrived at his destination, London, without injuries or deaths. There were seven concise episodes of increasing tension that captured the attention of Apple TV subscribers, a platform in need of unquestionable successes. And, six months after landing, Abduction in the Air has been renewed for a second season.
“The overwhelming public response after the first season left me speechless. It’s a secret what the future holds for Sam Nelson, but I can assure you that he will be back in action,” said Elba, executive producer and star, in the release. press. It is up in the air what form this return will take. Will it mean his character is back on a lethal flight? Will he find himself in more trouble on land? Or has his vocation changed to negotiation with hostage attacks?
Apple TV is estimated to invest around 8 billion annually in the production of television series. Despite the effort, the platform still has little penetration in the streaming market and, above all, has problems attracting significant audiences for its proposals in the United States. You just have to look at the weekly reports from the Nielsen company, which calculates the minutes consumed for each series: only three series from the service have ever managed to be among the most viewed on streaming.
A regular was the sports phenomenon Ted Lasso which, despite the limited subscriber base, managed to become the most watched original series on all platforms in 2003. It could thanks to word of mouth, reviews and consumption of the intermittent subscribers. It accumulated 16.9 billion minutes during the twelve months corresponding to the episodes of the three seasons broadcast.
But, by surprise, in the summer another Apple series entered the weekly reports: Kidnapping in the Air, during the first week of August, managed to accumulate 357 million minutes watched in the US with its British production. In September, the lucky one was The morning show, the journalistic drama with Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon, which became a recurring presence among the most viewed proposals.
With this data on the table, and taking into account that more expensive productions such as the science fiction series Fundación or Silo are renewed, it was a matter of time before the news was announced. And, in this way, Idris Elba adds a new success on television to his resume, which includes The Wire and Luther, and gets rid of the bad experience in streaming with Turn up Charlie, the comedy he produced for Netflix.
