NETFLIX HAS JUST released what may be the best kind of counterintuitive programming in these stay-indoors times. While Google Maps, city councils and travel operators are trying to console you with 360-degrees virtual views of places you miss, Netflix's taut new thriller makes you genuinely glad you stayed home.

Into The Night is a Belgian sci-fi series about a group of people on a night flight to nowhere in particular, just so that they can stay out of the sun and stay alive. In the first episode, the multi-national passengers on the red-eye from Brussels realise from online news reports that people around the world are dying the moment the sun appears in their corner of the earth. It seems a catastrophic solar event involving the sun reversing its polarity (a natural occurrence taking place every 11 years) has inexplicably turned it into a giant menace, killing every living organism in its wake.

Because the plane's pilot Mathieu (Laurent Capelluto) was forced at gunpoint to take the plane off the ground quickly, he is flying without a co-pilot and only one stewardess Gabrielle (Astrid Whetnall). There are less than a dozen passengers, all hailing from different countries such as Belgium, Turkey, Russia and the UK, and switching comfortably between French, Dutch, English and other languages.