Nightsleeper, BBC One review - strangers on a runaway train

“Let the train take the strain”, as the old advertising slogan urged us. The train in this six-part drama has to soak up a whole world of strain, as it’s taken over by cyber-hijackers who demand a huge ransom before they’ll consider relinquishing their technological grip.

The train is called "The Heart of Britain", and it’s the night sleeper service from Glasgow to Euston. Some viewers may detect resemblances between this and Idris Elba’s Apple TV plane-drama Hijack, or (in a more rail-orientated vein) Snowpiercer, but Nightsleeper does at least have the distinction – well, kind of – of being rooted very specifically in Britain’s rail network. Rail nerds can have a bit of fun tracing the train’s route as it lurches around the country, from Motherwell to Settle to Leeds and various points beyond.

Once again, the BBC have done that strange thing of broadcasting Nightsleeper in two-episode weekly chunks while simultaneously sticking all of it on iPlayer, presenting reviewers (who have of course diligently watched all of it) with the conundrum of how much of the story they’re allowed to reveal. However, it’s safe to say that writer Nick Leather (Murdered for Being Different, The Control Room) has used the plot as a device for examining the lives of the passengers as well as diving into the arcane mysteries of digital systems and surveillance.

One of the heroes of the show is Joe Roag (Joe Cole), a former Metropolitan Police cop who’s now wanted by Interpol for committing theft. Cole plays him with an air of melancholy resignation, though he realises that fate has dropped him into the middle of a crisis which gives him a chance to make amends for falling off the straight and narrow. He takes charge of the motley assortment of characters on the train, which range from James Cosmo’s melancholic old railway-man to oil-rig worker Danny Geoghan (Daniel Cahill) to, somewhat incredibly, the government’s transport secretary Liz Draycott (Sharon Small, pictured above).

Meanwhile, down at the flashy headquarters of the National Cyber Security Centre next door to London’s Victoria station, they’re trying to figure out who has hijacked the train and what they can do about it. Cometh the hour, cometh the woman, and in this case it’s Abby Aysgarth (Alexandra Roach, pictured above). Not at all predictably, she’s a bit of a lateral-thinking maverick who does things her own way and tends to fall foul of boring, unimaginative authority figures. When she calls in her old mentor Paul Peveril (David Threlfall, resembling a prehistoric hippy guru who’s only just staggered back from Woodstock), her boss Nicola Miller (Pamela Nomvete, pictured below) is enraged because “Pev” is a notorious loose cannon. With her dramatic magenta-coloured gown and lordly demeanour, Miller looks as if she’s about to go onstage at Covent Garden to play the Queen of Sheba.

Whether it’s actually possible to commandeer a train by plugging a tiny gizmo called a “single board computer” into the electronics seems highly improbable, let alone taking over every train and all the signalling from Lands End to John O’Groats. Best not ask too many questions, eh? Whatever, Nightsleeper’s six episodes feel about two too many, and the plot regularly clanks and squeals to a halt as it detours into the back-story branch-lines of yet another character.

It's all a bit biog-by-numbers. A glimmer of drama is cranked up over the difficult pregnancy being endured by Geoghan’s wife, while Abby has a little soliloquy about how her father taught her all about building computers but never showed her enough love. The transport secretary gets a bit self-pitiful and tells everyone that “there is another me and it’s just like all of you,” while Billy the train steward (Scott Reid) has to reveal his secret liaison with Caleb, a Syrian asylum seeker who conveniently happens to be a trained nurse.

There are some tidy cliffhangers along the way, and the obligatory nail-biting climax, but in the end you’ll probably wish you’d opted for easyJet.

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