The Airport Chaplain: SBS’s global Netflix debut is heartfelt TV that will blow you away

SBS When the trailer for SBS’s new drama The Airport Chaplain was released, it looked too good to be true: national treasure Hugo Weaving, rising star Shabana Azeez, and an endearing conceptual combination of The Terminal meets Border Security.

Fortunately, the series is even better than I’d hoped.

The role of airport chaplain Weaving’s Tobias Wallace is the titular chaplain.

He is “not an inquisitor or a priest” – more “a social worker in a fluoro vest” than a man of God.

His job is to provide support for all faiths passing through Melbourne Airport and, in practice, he works as something of a fixer of myriad daily crises.

Among other examples, this manifests in: a mad, security protocol-defying dash to return a lost stuffed animal; digging through a passenger’s checked luggage to find an engagement ring for a Valentines Day proposal; trying to win the trust of a distressed unknown woman who has holed up in the airport’s prayer room for several days; and attempting to deescalate a panicked passenger with a suitcase full of contraband.

He knows and helps everyone – the cleaners, baggage handlers, security, customs and flight crews – albeit in unorthodox ways, and amid a relentless stream of arrivals and departures.

Enter terminal manager Mira Tobias’s phone may be ringing off the hook, but the chaplain’s role is immediately cast into doubt by the new terminal manager, Mira (Shabana Azeez).

Her clear remit to trim the fat and her obsession with protocol sparks something of a power struggle with Tobias.

But Mira is a complicated antagonist with her own humanising pressures coming from home and her obnoxious bosses.

Most viewers will recognise her from HBO’s The Pitt, but Azeez is actually a local making her first major Australian TV debut with this series.

The scenes in which Tobias and Mira go head-to-head – when he’s not screening her calls and she can pin him down in one place – are wonderfully combative and uncomfortable.

Hugo Weaving and Shabana Azees make a wonderfully combative pair.

SBS SBS’s global Netflix debut The Airport Chaplain is perfection from public broadcaster, SBS.