Featured Image Credit: ITV
Topics: China, Conspiracy Theory, Crime, ITV, London, TV, TV and Film
The LADbible Team
Topics: China, Conspiracy Theory, Crime, ITV, London, TV, TV and Film
If you need a gritty new thriller to obsess over, ITV has got you covered.
Chilling conspiracy theories clash with international crime in new six-part series Red Eye, which has been dubbed a 'collision of three worlds' and stars Jing Lusi and Fool Me Once star Richard Armitage alongside Lesley Sharp and Jemma Moore.
Award-winning producer Julie Gardner (I Hate Suzie, Doctor Who) will executive-produce the series alongside Lachlan MacKinnon (Industry, A Discovery of Witches). Fortitude and Power Book IV: Force director Kieron Hawkes will direct all episodes in the series, which is produced by Kristian Dench (The Capture, Strike Back).
Red Eye follows the journeys of three women - DC Hana Li (Lusi), journalist Jess Li (Moore) and MI5’s Madeline Delaney (Sharp) - who are all thrown into the same life-threatening conspiracy.
It all starts when British doctor Matthew Nolan (Armitage) flies home from a medical conference in Beijing - where he came frighteningly close to dying in a car crash - and is immediately arrested at London's Heathrow Airport.
He's nicked for murder after officials discover a dead woman inside the mangled vehicle he just about escaped from, despite the medic insisting that he was driving alone.
Nolan is hauled back to China to face charges by copper DC Hana Li, but when a death occurs onboard their flight, even she starts to suspect something fishy is going on and launches her own investigation.
The synopsis explains: "Further deaths confirm that Nolan truly is in danger, and after a call from MI5, Hana finds herself embroiled in an escalating conspiracy.
"Meanwhile the head of MI5, Madeline Delaney (Sharp), breaks protocol and risks her entire career to not only help Hana and Nolan stay alive, but to expose an international conspiracy that seems to implicate both China and people in her own government for the murders on flight 357."
Back in London, Hana's half-sister and journalist Jess tries to cash in on her assignment and launches her own probe into Nolan's extradition, before finding herself on the run from an unknown assassin.
Red Eye takes viewers on an all-night flight from London to Beijing, through the mean streets of London and the corridors of power within Whitehall.
Armitage told the Radio Times that Red Eye was similar to the series inspired by Agatha Christie's novel, And Then There Were None, but 'set on an airplane' instead of an isolated island.
"It's just sort of a return in a way to that sort of political espionage that I love, that we did with Spooks," Armitage said. "It's elements of that in it."
The actor said even he didn't know if his character was 'telling the truth' at some points in Red Eye, saying he went from being 'absolutely convinced of his innocence to really doubting who he is'.
I guess we will have to make our own minds up when it finally releases on ITVX - which you can stream for free on ITVX from 21 April.