The Airport Chaplain Review: ★★★★☆ (4/5)
The Airport Chaplain is a warm, surprisingly addictive drama that finds plenty of stories tucked inside a busy airport terminal. Hugo Weaving is excellent as the kind-hearted Tobias, while Shabana Azeez and Claudia Karvan add real strength to a terrific ensemble cast.
Rating: ★★★★☆ (4/5)
Language: English
Genre: Drama
Episodes: 8
Platform: Netflix
Cast: Hugo Weaving, Shabana Azeez, Claudia Karvan, Thomas Weatherall, Fanny Hanusin, Erroll Shand
Airports are usually places where people arrive, leave, and move on without giving much thought to the strangers around them. The Airport Chaplain takes that familiar setting and asks a simple question: what happens when someone actually notices the people struggling beneath all that movement?
This new Australian drama, created by Elise McCredie and Jude Troy, centres on Tobias Wallace, played by Hugo Weaving. He is the chaplain at a busy Melbourne airport, and his job stretches well beyond offering spiritual advice.
Tobias is simply not the kind of person who can walk away when someone needs help. He handles lost luggage, frightened passengers, family problems, security issues, and emergencies, often finding unconventional ways to fix problems most people would rather leave to someone else.
What makes him genuinely interesting is that he is not written as some perfect hero. Tobias has plenty of his own baggage, including a strained relationship with his daughter Steph and painful memories tied to a past loss. While he spends most of his time helping others, it slowly becomes clear he is also working through his own unresolved emotions along the way.
Hugo Weaving fits this role remarkably well. There is a natural warmth running through his performance, and Tobias comes across as someone you could genuinely trust during a rough moment. He carries a quiet authority without ever needing to prove he is the smartest person in the room.
The show also gives Tobias a strong opponent in Mira Ansari-Cole, played by Shabana Azeez. As the new terminal manager, Mira has far less patience for Tobias’ habit of bending the rules.
Their dynamic quickly becomes one of the show’s most entertaining threads. Tobias believes helping people always comes first, while Mira has to juggle procedures, workplace rules, and her own precarious position within a difficult system.
Azeez is genuinely excellent here. Mira is not just an obstacle standing in Tobias’ way. She has her own real struggles, including pressure at home and sexism at work, which makes her frustration with Tobias a lot easier to understand.
Claudia Karvan is another standout as Cath, an experienced airport service manager and one of Tobias’ closest allies. She brings a calm, practical energy along with a lovely warmth to the busy terminal setting.
The supporting cast adds plenty of colour throughout the series. Thomas Weatherall plays Johnny, a security worker on probation whom Tobias quietly takes under his wing. Fanny Hanusin brings genuine humour as cleaner Connie, while Erroll Shand leaves an impression as baggage boss Lex, a man fiercely determined to protect his exhausted staff.
One of the show’s biggest strengths is simply how well it uses the airport as a central location. There are always new people showing up with new problems, which gives the writers a genuinely endless well of material to draw from.
The early episodes bounce between different storylines, from a passenger taking over the prayer room to a lost toy, a support dog, and some thorny security questions. These smaller moments gradually build into bigger, more emotional stories.
The third episode stands out in particular, following a woman fleeing an abusive partner with her young daughter. It is a genuinely tense storyline, but handled with real care, and it gives Tobias and Cath’s friendship a chance to deepen in a meaningful way.
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The series also touches on issues like racial profiling, workplace sexism, grief, and family conflict without ever making an episode feel like a lecture. These emotional themes are generally woven naturally into the characters’ own problems.
At times, the storytelling can feel a bit scattered, since so many characters and situations get introduced all at once. The first episode is also quieter than you might expect given how busy the setting is. But once the different threads start connecting, the show gets a lot easier to sink into.
The Airport Chaplain works because it understands that an airport is more than just a building full of gates and security lines. It is a place where people can experience joy, fear, grief, confusion, and hope, all within the same few hours.
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Overall, this is a heartfelt, genuinely engaging watch. Hugo Weaving strikes the right balance of kindness, humour, and emotional weight as Tobias, while Shabana Azeez and Claudia Karvan strengthen an already strong ensemble.
The Airport Chaplain may not always be perfectly structured, but its warmth is honestly hard to resist. At its core, it is a character-driven drama about helping people when they need it most, and that simple idea ends up being the show’s biggest strength.