More Airplane! than Speed: Nightsleeper reviewed

Earlier this year, ITV brought us Red Eye, a six-part drama set mainly on an overnight plane from London to Beijing. Displaying a heroic indifference to plausibility, the show was an increasingly deranged mash-up of every thriller convention known to man – while still posing (when it remembered to) as a thoughtful exploration of realpolitik.

Funnily enough, this week’s Nightsleeper was much the same thing – only this time on an overnight train from Glasgow to London. The first sign that the passengers wouldn’t get a restful sleep before Euston came when a mysterious beeping device with lots of wires was discovered in the guardroom floor. Luckily, the man who discovered it was Joe Roag (Joe Cole), a Met detective who happened to know the switchboard number of the National Security Cyber Centre. He was then put straight through to the acting technical director Abby Aysgarth (Alexandra Roach) who, naturally, was at the airport about to go on a much-needed holiday. Even so, she immediately returned to the office to stare up at a giant computer screen covered with flashing symbols.

From this, and the information supplied by Joe, Abby deduced that the train had been ‘hackjacked’ and was now under the control of that bleeping device. Having helpfully stopped at Motherwell to release most of the passengers and crew (thereby reducing the on-board cast to a more manageable 12), the now driverless sleeper set off again with the apparent aim of crashing into London.

Meanwhile, we’d met Abby’s colleagues, who duly included an awkwardly recent ex-lover, a computer nerd who looked about 14 and a stern female boss whose catchphrase was ‘Abby! Incident room! Now!’. By this stage all that was missing was the mad scientist who’d long predicted the disaster – and he soon showed up in the scenery-chewing form of a spectacularly bearded David Threlfall.