Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Departure’ On Peacock, A Conspiracy Thriller Starring Archie Panjabi and Christopher Plummer

Have you ever watched a show and wondered, “Why did that great actor sign onto this show?” It’s when it seems that a big-name actor is so much better than the run-of-the-mill series they’re on. For Peacock’s Canadian import Departure, there are not one, but two actors who fit in that category. Read on for more.

DEPARTURE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A British woman hails a cab in New York, and she asks the driver to get her to JFK as fast as possible.

The Gist: The woman, Madelyn Strong (Rebecca Liddiard), is on a flight back to London, where her fiance, Ali (Shazad Latif) is assuring her that he’s met with her influential father and they’re cool.

But as the flight takes off, we see the pilot, Captain Richard Donovan (Allan Hawco) distracted on the phone. He sends his co-pilot out for a coffee, then locks the door to the cockpit. Suddenly, Flight 716 starts going down. A hole gets ripped in the fuselage, sending the co-pilot and a flight attendant out of the plane. Madelyn almost gets sucked out, too, but a passenger catches her. Then the plane disappears.

Back in London, Kendra Malley (Archie Panjabi), an ace investigator for the Transport Safety And Invetigations Bureau (TSIB) who went on leave after her husband died in a plane crash, is recruited to come back by the agency’s senior manager and her mentor, Howard Lawson (Christopher Plummer). The flight that’s disappeared could end up being the biggest loss of life in British aviation history; besides, the fact that it was a new UK-made plane that’s on order with China and other nations means that it could be “tits up for British Aviation.” That’s why Lawson wants his best on this case.

On her team are people she’s familiar with, but there’s also Dominick Hayes (Kris Holden-Ried ) a former cop who is a law enforcement liaison, i.e. an antiterrorism specialist. `He was also supposed to be the team lead until Malley came back.

As the investigation begins, the team is up against the clock because of the cold North Atlantic. They have only six hours to find survivors until hypothermia sets in. But the search area is humongous. Also, the PM’s office is breathing down Lawson’s neck, looking for answers. With some clever math and satellite data, Malley and her team manage to significantly narrow the search area, but time is starting to run short.

In the meantime, Dom notices that Captain Donovan had two phones, one that looks like an old Blackberry. He has the cell pings from the plane traced, and he finds out that Donovan, married to a woman with a daughter in London, has a husband and new baby in Dublin. So he’s definitely a factor, as is Hassan Esmaili (Emilio Doorgasingh), a passenger who is on watch lists and trained as a pilot.

Malley also has to contend with the return of her son AJ (Alexandre Bourgeois), also still in pain from her father’s loss, who brought an unnanounced new girlfriend named Leah (Chloe Farnworth) with him back to London.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? A little bit of Manifest, a touch of Lost, a little bit of The Blacklist, and a sprinkle of Homeland.

Our Take: There seems to be nothing particularly original about Departure, a Canadian-British production that first aired on Canada’s Global Network in 2019. Created by Vince Shiao, it comes off as a pretty run-of-the-mill airplane crash conspiracy show, told from the perspective of the people investigating it. We know that there will be at least one survivor, given that only one of the plane’s passengers was given any sort of backstory by Shiao and his writers, and only one passenger’s family does more than just shoot questions at the airline’s CEO Ethan Moreau (Dougray Scott).

But then… but then… You see Panjabi, an Emmy winner (and an EP of the series), as the show’s lead. Then you see the Oscar, Tony and Emmy-winning Plummer sitting behind the desk as Malley’s mentor, and you start to think: “How did this run-of-the-mill network conspiracy show get those two amazing actors to sign on?”

That’s what had us scratching our heads throughout the first episode. While the rest of Malley’s team outside Dom seem pretty interchangable, despite the fine actors playing those roles, Panjabi and Plummer stand out because they’re not playing their roles like they’re in a broadcast network procedural. They both bring a credibility to their roles that makes what happens during the investigation somewhat plausible. So we were just confused; everything about this show feels like it could fit on NBC proper’s 2020-21 fall schedule. And, yes, we get that it isn’t often when star supporting player Panjabi gets a lead role. But Plummer? As a grizzled old boss and mentor? It seems like a role that’s well below his skill set.

Listen, the show can get good, but it all depends on the conspiracy that caused the plane to disappear in the first place. There’s a mysterious magnate named Pavel Bartok (Sasha Roiz) who may or may not have something to do with this. There’s the pilot’s double lives. Then, of course, there’s the usual and tired specter of Middle Eastern terrorism at work. If the conspiracy gets really convoluted, then people will lose interest in this show pretty quickly.

Sex and Skin: Nothing.

Parting Shot: A single survivor is detected floating on the ocean. Care to guess who that survivor is?

Sleeper Star: We’re guessing Rebecca Liddiard will have a lot to do, despite being on the plane that disappeared. It’s just a hunch.

Most Pilot-y Line: Can’t we have one conspiracy series that completely avoids accusing a brown person with a beard of causing a disaster? That would be a refreshing change of pace.

Our Call: STREAM IT. There’s lots about Departure that’s really silly, but Panjabi and Plummer carry the series into the realm of respectability.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

Stream Departure On Peacock