The creators of the series “Hijack” set two priorities for themselves in their “real time” seven part “seven hour flight” thriller.

Priority one, Get Idris Elba. Priority two, try to squeeze a Big Surprise or two in most every episode.

And although the plot’s a bit of a reach, although we’re treated to several of the quietest air traffic control centers ever depicted on film, although the middle acts drag and although there are a number far fetched moments with an eye-rolling logic all their own, Idris and this story give you enough to justify sticking with it.

I watched it all the way through, and — here’s ANOTHER proviso — “although” I wasn’t blown away, it makes for an intiguing and sometimes tense 5-6 hours of television, even if it does feel like a 100 minute movie padded in the modern streaming style.

You know the drill — tense bits, filler, extraneous characters, zinger, more filler, a blast of suspense aaaaannnnnnd…cliffhanger.

Elba’s a guy who boards Kingdom Air flight 29 from Dubai to London with no luggage, just a jewel box in his pocket. But Sam Nelson isn’t the most suspicious guy in the lot.

He’s the sort who notices things, which we notice with him — the pastor passenger who tries to bribe his way to getting his elderly wife into business class, the irritaable woman wrangling two kids along with their father, snapping at other passengers who give her the look or dare to say something, the sickly elderly Arab man who with nephews, the three girls from some athletic team, etc.

And once the plane is airborne, while Sam may not be privy to all that’s being said, somebody finds something, other folks get involved and the next thing we know, five pistol-packing hijackers have taken over the plane.

Their leader (Neil Maskell) is determined to breach the cockpit, and they’ve done the homework necessary to blackmail the pilot (Ben Miles). But they’re in no hurry at all to let the world know that they have the plane. They aren’t making demands. And the passengers have no clue why this is happening or how they should react.

After 9/11, some assume the worst and manfully plot simple, violent resistance. Others cower.

Sam? He’s got “special skills.” His magic power is negotiating, getting clients, buyers/sellers to “yes.”

Next thing the passengers know, he’s cozying up to “the guy in charge,” offering his services, identifying “issues” that may serve their purpose or more likely his.

“I just want to get home” he says in more than one installment. But that fellow behind the wheel?

“The pilot is a problem.”

The series gives us four distinct points of view, with sidebars built around name supporting players (Ruth Sheen and Simon McBurney) in the later acts.

We’re in the plane with Sam, the hijackers and the 210 other passengers and crew. And we’re in air traffic control, first in Dubai, where Abdullah (Mohamed Faisal Mostafa) gets curious about what’s going on with this Airbus. They’ve got “a situation” or “incident” in progress. Then they don’t.

The pilot “sounded calm.” “They ALL do.” “Pilots?” “No, British people!”

“The plane who cried ‘wolf?'”

An always-late single-mum air controller in London (Eve Myles) is also wondering what’s up with this plane long before it approaches Jolly Olde airspace.

A third point of view concerns Sam’s teen son, his moved-on ex-wife (Christine Adams) — the one who insisted, by text, that he not “get on that plane.” She’s taken up with a new bloke. Daniel (Max Beesley) is a cop. A curious and cryptic text to Marsha from Sam gets Daniel involved, calling in cop favors.

Former partner — in more ways than one — Deevia (Zora Bishop) makes an inquiry and shrugs it off, until Alice the air traffic controller rings up her Counter Terrorism department with a few clues about the “message” the plane’s movement is sending to them.

The government response — mostly British, but including air traffic control and scrambled fighter jets in other countries — is the fourth point of view the series tracks.

Through it all, through the ever more complex “motive,” the shifting dynamics of the criminal gang, the whispering, scheming passengers and crew, Sam works the angles, ingratiates himself here and there to the point where the passngers think he’s “a traitor,” and tries to get one or two chess moves ahead of this seemingly well-oiled criminal machine that’s taken them over with purposes unknown.

There are too many characters to do justice to, creating consistency problems even with Elba’s hero, whose “negotiating” seems so weak a hook to hang his “special skills” on that even the filmmakers abandon it for long stretches.

Get attached to this character or that one, and they are abruptly killed. The first actual violence is all the more shocking because it isn’t perpetrated by the hijackers.

I’m on a fence as to whether Apple TV+ has served up something people will be on tenterhooks for each week, waiting for the next installment. Elba’s good, but the plot hits a few walls and the endless sideshows suck away at the series’ foreward motion and narrative drive.

“Hijack,” like all streaming series, has “dawdling” and beating-round-the-bush built in.

If you’re into Idris playing a character who’s a talker not a fighter, he doesn’t disappoint. The series? It leaves us short of our destination.

Rating: TV-MA, violence

Cast: Idris Elba, Neil Maskell, Zora Bishop, Eve Myles, Max Beesley, Ben Miles, Kate Phillips, Christine Adams, Kaisa Hammarlund, Mohamed Faisal Mostafa, Ruth Sheen and Simon McBurney

Credits. Created by George Kay and Tim Field Smith. An Apple TV+ release.

Running time: Seven episodes @44-50 min. each