(Kruiser's Note: After not watching much television at all for most of my life, the Morning Briefing turned me into an avid binge kind of guy. I like to have something on when I'm working on the second half of each day's MB, and I burn through a lot of what's available. I started this column to occasionally share thoughts on what I've seen. I am not a professional TV critic, but I have mad skills when it comes to being opinionated. Also, I've been on Japanese television, so, yeah.)
Wow, it's March and I am just getting around to the first "Strengthen Your Stream" of 2026. I've just got a couple for you to start off, but this column will become a regular thing this year and we can cover a lot of shows. Right now, let's take a look at one show that I really liked at first, but disappointed me in Season 2, and another that is really surprising me with its sophomore effort.
Hijack (Apple TV+) I guess that my headline did give a lot away about this one. This is a show that the general online buzz has treated as an underrated gem. I'm not sure how anything starring Idris Elba can really fly under the radar, but people seemed to think that this show was doing just that.
In the first season, Elba's character Sam Nelson is on a plane that's been hijacked and he's going to somehow save the day. It's a unique twist on an old premise — Sam Nelson is a corporate negotiator, not a martial arts tough guy or former special forces type. The hijackers are a mixed bag too. I won't cover one of my biggest pet peeves about them because it's a huge spoiler. In the end, Nelson has saved most of the day. It was interesting, different, and Idris Elba was wonderful.
Season 2 is all about Sam Nelson being on a train. I am intentionally saying that this one quickly goes off the rails. The premise is that Nelson has been forced to hijack the train. All I will give away here is that Nelson was brooding over his ex-wife in Season 1, and Season 2 focuses on the brooding. It ends up being like a bad Hallmark Channel show with bomb threats. Idris Elba does the brooding thing well, but it gets old in a hurry. They've also surrounded him with characters that weren't nearly as interesting as in the first season.
RATING: Season 1: 🍺🍺🍺🍺 Season 2: 🍺
Paradise (Hulu) I love a good post-apocalyptic drama, and this one has not disappointed.
First off, the apocalypse event in this one is interesting; I don't think any of us are in the mood for plague-related stuff just yet. The world ends and the President of the United States and a couple of thousand carefully chosen people are whisked away to a massive underground bunker buried in the mountains in Colorado. There's a city there that's been built because the government knew that everything was going to hit the fan.
That's part of what this is about. Season 1 is also a good old-fashioned whodunit. It focuses on POTUS's Secret Service head of security, played by Sterling K Brown. James Marsden is the president, and he gets murdered in the secure bunker early in the pilot episode. The way the investigation into that plays out is fantastic.
This is is very good at throwing interesting plot twists at the viewer in pretty much every episode. Season 1 was strong, and I was worried about the follow-up, especially after the whole Hijack experience. The first episode of the second season is a departure that I thought I was going to not like at all, then ended up loving. Hulu hasn't released all of the episodes yet, but the only way they can screw this up for me is to have Henry Winkler on an actual shark in the finale.
All of the characters in this show are well-written, and I'm even OK with all of the flashbacks.
RATING: 🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺
It's good to be back! I promise that I will have more for you next week!
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