The Apple+ series “Hijack” is flying under the radar of big-studio offerings but delivers more serious drama than has been seen since the disaster films of the 1970s, showing that in the right hands, well-worn territory can still hold viewers spellbound.

A British actor, Idris Elba, stars as Sam Nelson, trying to get home to his estranged wife at London from Dubai. The flight is seven hours, with each episode covering the journey in real time — it’s more than 31 tense minutes before the hijackers storm the cockpit.

Our bad guys are forced to move up their timetable when something goes wrong. This isn’t a well-oiled scheme executed by cookie-cutter henchmen. They feel like actual people, as does Mr. Elba, understated and commanding on screen.

Mr. Elba seems in control even at gunpoint. He’s vulnerable, but you can see his mind whirring. “Hijack” is a glimpse of what might have been had he not been turned off to the mantle of James Bond after racial tropes and politics emerged, both qualities absent from “Hijack.”

That Mr. Elba is of African descent caused some to object to his casting as 007 as they did to his Marvel role as Heimdall, watchman of the Norse gods. However, the BBC diversity chief, Miranda Wayland, also criticized his titular role in the series “Luther” for not being “black enough to be real.”

Imagine an actor of such range that he is called both too black and too white. That talent to lose himself in roles helps depict his character as just another passenger sitting next to us, investing us in Empire Flight KA29’s fate.

Apple+ built an Airbus A330 to scale with a functioning cockpit for the series, but it’s the actors who bring the scenes to life with top-shelf performances and little details. For one thing, they drip with sweat, both out of fear and because it’s just hot in a metal tube filled with recycled air.

Arab characters and British alike, male and female, are flawed, clever, afraid, and brave, doing their jobs on unkempt sets that look real, not sound stages flooded with light. A Dubai air traffic controller, Abdullah, played by Mohamed Mostafa, displays real qualities, too, alerting superiors when something feels wrong.

When told the pilot doesn’t sound frightened, Abdullah refuses to accept it as proof. “That’s how they sound,” he says. “British people. Zero emotion. Tells us nothing.” The line might have been a sneer. Instead, it’s what Rex Stout’s fictional detective, Nero Wolfe, described as “intelligence guided by experience.”

Abdullah does not act insubordinate or fly off the handle because he’s a professional and he’s unsure. Twenty-two years after 9/11, it’s realistic that the suggestion of a hijacking is met with skepticism by those too young to have lived through it or for whom the memory has faded.

Abdullah’s counterpart at Heathrow, Eve Myles as Alice Sinclair — harried and tired, lying about her son having surgery to explain showing up late — shifts into work mode when it counts, listening to her gut as Abdullah does his.

The villains are as inscrutable as Mr. Elba’s character, who’s described as a corporate negotiator but — considering the way his wife and son pause before delivering what sounds like a rehearsed response — we suspect has other talents.

Why did the hijackers seize the plane? With some of them objecting to taking life, will they fight among themselves, providing our hero with an opening to exploit? Who’s the mastermind on the ground and why isn’t he answering the hijackers’ calls?

The passengers and crew get fleshed out without clunky exposition dumps, too, though we’ve all seen them on the planes before: Parents with small children, businessmen, older folks, adults with sick elders, long-married couples as comfortable and bored with each other as old shoes.

“Hijack” is a slow-burn thriller from the days when studios took the time to craft them rather than just applying that label in PR material. Overcome with tension, you may shout, “Somebody throw a pie,” but you won’t get that release and instead find yourself scanning the skies, hoping the next episode arrives on time at the gate.