The Flight Attendant

It's a blackly hilarious comedy, a grim character study, a slow unraveling of a troubling past, a dazzling coming-out party for comedienne Kaley Cuoco as a lead actress and, yeah, a vexatiously fascinating murder mystery. You won't be able to take your eyes off of it.

A jaunty spy thriller score set the tone for what the fast-paced show becomes in episode two once Cassie regularly imagines conversations with the dead guy (Michiel Huisman, “Game of Thrones”) as her way of coping. “The Flight Attendant” becomes a comedic mystery-thriller and Cuoco’s presence and performance capably sell its delicately balanced tone.

Mostly it’s Cuoco’ show – less the flight attendant than the pilot of this smoothly airborne caper.

Stressful to watch at times but intriguing, funny and thrilling, The Flight Attendant is a drama that takes a little while to take off but is an eight-parter stuffed with terrific performances from its stellar cast, particularly Cuoco.

Overall, however, it’s a hoot. And a star-making (and Big Bang Theory-shedding) turn from the Golden Globe-nominated Cuoco, who has the requisite magnetism and range of facial tics to make the slip-sliding screwball comedy work. Seatbelts on – it’s an enjoyably turbulent flight.

The mystery rights itself before it crashes; we finish the eight episodes because of the show’s aesthetic ambition—clear from its boldly designed title cards, which evoke Saul Bass—and because of Cuoco’s remarkable performance, a breakthrough for the career sitcom actor.

The ingredients that make up “The Flight Attendant,” HBO Max’s highly entertaining, stealthily thoughtful new thriller, should all feel familiar to anyone who loves television, movies, and/or a good page-turner.

It’s a lot of fun, if you’re willing to go along for a ride that doesn’t always track but almost always entertains. It’s a thriller, and it’s a drama, but it’s also almost a comedy, with a brisk pace and a playful tone. It takes itself seriously, but only to a point.

The entire story truly rests in Cuoco’s capable hands. Her knack for comic relief is securely intact, but she also easily dives into the depths of Cassie’s terror and uncertainty. Her journey is our journey. Her terror is our terror. She may be an unreliable narrator, but she’s a highly entertaining one. Bottom line? This is a series poised to take off.

The whole production is buoyed by Cuoco’s performance, which is a pitch-perfect combination of high-energy franticness and real emotional insight. She rides along with the show’s occasionally bumpy tonal reversals, pulling off both its campy excesses and its sudden swerves into remembered childhood trauma.

As amusingly improbable and slick as the show is, The Flight Attendant digs deep when necessary. That comes through especially in how the story depicts Cassie’s relationship to drinking. ... It makes for a strong counterpoint to the somewhat ridiculous world of crime that she’s wandered into; the plot points don’t have to be believable if the character feels like a real person.

With slick directing from Susanna Fogel, a jazzy score from Blake Neely, and sporadic flashes to Cassie’s terrified subconscious, the show quickly becomes a surreal noir with a solid screwball performance at its center.

Like a night plastered at your favorite bar, it may not be the most important or essential show this year. But, god, is it a blast.

If you're coming to The Flight Attendant to see the further adventures of Penny, you aren't going to get it. Instead, you'll find an energetic, dark comedy that doubles as a murder thriller. And through four episodes, it works.

A fast-moving mystery anchored by Kaley Cuoco's versatile lead performance, The Flight Attendant is the TV equivalent of a beach read, pure and simple. Only what it accomplishes is actually not so simple; most shows of this type tend to get weighed down by the clumsiness of broadcast storytelling or the pretensions of cable prestige. The Flight Attendant seems happy to be enjoyed and disposed of. It has a confidence of identity that I appreciated.

With an actor less capable than Cuoco, it might be easy to turn off the TV when it gets too awkward. But it is precisely Cuoco's deft handle of dark comedy and drama that makes "Attendant" fly, as she switches from emotional outburst to drunken escapade to terror and back again with ease.

At times “The Flight Attendant” is a little too zippy and visually self-indulgent for its own good, but it’s a wickedly funny black comedy with some poignant domestic drama, and Cuoco is a marvel to watch every second she’s onscreen.

Messy as all that sounds, it mostly works thanks largely to Cuoco, "The Big Bang Theory" star who doubles as a producer (along with writer Steve Yockey and the prolific Greg Berlanti), and manages to convey the darkly comic aspects of Cassandra's plight without undermining the thriller-like foundation.

Reconciling these two stories is a real trick; the four episodes made available for this review (out of eight) certainly achieve the story’s nonstop anxiety level, but one gets the feeling that the whole thing would come apart without Cuoco’s impressive grip on the character: a woman who is out of control, expertly played by an actress who demonstrates such precision.

There are some seemingly unnecessary detours involving supporting characters like Cassie’s best friend Annie (Zosia Mamet) and co-worker Megan (Rosie Perez). But the main plot moves briskly, even as the investigation forces Cassie to turn inward and figure out how she became the ungainly disaster whose friends indulge her only because she’ll make good story fodder later. Cuoco is sharp and likable throughout.

It’s an engrossing, somewhat weightless throwback, but one that hearkens back to USA’s “Characters Welcome” motto rather than Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

The Flight Attendant's glimpses into Cassie's deeper complexities are largely overshadowed by her frantic, increasingly silly efforts to find the mystery woman she met in Bangkok (Michelle Gomez) and piece together the events leading up to Alex's death.