FLYING IN THE FACE OF FEAR

Katherine Kelly heads this gritty crime drama in which she plays a flight attendant whose life is turned upside down when she's blackmailed into drug smuggling

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With roles in Happy Valley, The Crow Girl and Yorkshire Ripper drama The Long Shadow, Katherine Kelly is no stranger to gritty drama.

However, it was her new role in crime thriller In Flight that took her to the darkest places.

In this six-part series, Katherine plays Jo Conran, a flight attendant whose son, Sonny, is imprisoned in Bulgaria for a murder he swears he did not commit. Early in the first episode, she meets Cormac (Stuart Martin), who charms her over a drink. But things take a turn for the worse when Cormac turns out to be a violent gang leader who coerces Jo into using her job to repeatedly smuggle drugs to keep her son alive.

"You've got to let your imagination go to some dark places to make sure you can access that," says mum-of-two Katherine. "Every actor's process is different but we all have to go to some dark places. It's a dark topic."

To go through with the plan, Jo enlists the help of her ex Dom Delaney (Ashley Thomas), who works as a customs officer at the airport and tries to make sure she can get through security without getting caught. While her character may come across as brave in the circumstances, Katherine says she's simply playing an "every woman", and insists that "she's not extraordinary in any way, shape or form".