Per Deadline, UK network Channel 4 has ordered In Flight to series, a six-part crime drama starring Katherine Kelly (The Long Shadow, Ruby Speaking). The plot centers around single mother Jo Conran, portrayed by Kelly, whose son is serving a 15-year sentence in a Bulgarian prison for a murder he swears not to have committed. When she is approached by a gang who knows all about her situation, she is blackmailed into drug smuggling and forced into a world of corrupt cops and hired killers in order to keep her child alive.
Filming is currently underway in Belfast, Northern Island, with funding support from Northern Ireland Screen. The series is set across multiple locations, including London, Bangkok, Bulgaria and Istanbul.
The cast includes Stuart Martin (Twilight of the Gods, Crime) as a key member of the criminal gang and Ashley Thomas (The Serpent Queen, Black Cake) as a customs officer at a major London airport. Bronagh Waugh (Ridley, Death in Paradise), Harry Cadby (Everything Now, Inside Man), Corinna Brown (Heartstopper, Doctors) and Ambreen Razia (Starstruck, The Curse) are also featured members of the cast.
Anna Burns (Whitstable Pearl, The Doll Factory), Tony Wood (Ride, Desi Rascals) and Richard Tulk-Hart (The Burning Girls, Spy Wars) are the executive producers for Buccaneer, with Rebecca Dundon (Alice & Jack) and Simon Judd (In The Flesh, Emmerdale Farm) doing the same for Fremantle alongside Mike Walden (Marcella, Concordia), Adam Randall (Slow Horses) and Chris Baugh (Wreck, Tin Star). Brendan Mullin (Dalgliesh, Storyland) is the producer, and Gary Davy (Paris Has Fallen, The Veil) led casting.
“In Flight is our spin on the noir genre, a high-stakes, stylish romantic thriller with iconic characters and nerve-shredding action,” said Walden and Randall in a statement. “Channel 4 is the perfect home for our story and we’re so excited to be collaborating with such a brilliant team. Jo is a character close to our hearts. She is an ordinary woman facing extraordinary odds. We can’t wait for audiences to meet her.”
Channel 4 has increasingly looked to international co-production models to fund its drama, with the likes of crime drama Patience brought into the network through a similar model earlier this year to offset rising costs of commissions.
Dundon, Fremantle’s SVP of Scripted Content, said the series would be a “surprising, propulsive standout” as a “high stakes action crime thriller that combines the intensity of international drug smuggling with the emotional depth of a mother’s relentless quest to save her son.”