“Don’t fantasise about a rescue,” the kidnapped scientist Amber (Jessica Ann Collins) is told in Echo 3, “they can’t find this place.”
“You don’t know my family,” she replies with a pointed look on her face.
Apple TV+’s latest original series is set to be a high-stakes thriller, telling the story of a woman who is kidnapped and held hostage in Venezuela, leaving it up to her husband and brother (who just happen to be Special Forces) to get her out. Think Taken, but with more family members who sent out on the rescue mission.
But are there any true-life events behind this blockbuster, also featuring Luke Evans (who plays her brother, Bambi) and Michiel Huisman (who plays her husband, Prince)? Let’s take a deep dive and find out…
The backstory
While Echo 3 is not based on a true story, it’s been adapted from a 2008 Israeli novel When Heroes Fly (also translated as Heroes Fly To Her) by Amir Gutfreund, which has some elements of real history within it.
The book starts after the Six-Day War, also known as the Third Arab-Israeli War, in June, 1967. The war, in which Israel captured the Sinai Peninsula, Gaza Strip, West Bank, Old City of Jerusalem, and Golan Heights, saw devastating casualties despite being less than a week long. According to Britannica: “Egypt’s casualties numbered more than 11,000, with 6,000 for Jordan and 1,000 for Syria, compared with only 700 for Israel.”
In Gutfreund’s novel, he focuses on five boys and one girl who grow up in a working-class apartment block in Haifa, a northern city in Israel, and he explores the impact these historical events have had on their adolescence. Jumping forward three decades in a Chicago suburb, the five men – whose lives have taken very different paths – reunite to rescue the girl (who was one of the boy’s girlfriends at the time) from a religious cult in America.
The 2018 TV show When Heroes Fly, which was adapted by Omri Givon, and is available to watch on Netflix now, changed a few details of the original book: there were just four men rather than five, and they were veterans who served in the 2006 Lebanon war. And it’s a decade later that they try to find Yaeli in Columbia, after she was presumed dead, with the men still dealing with the traumatic impact of war.
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Now for the 10-part English-language adaptation, Echo 3, there are even more changes. Described as “a layered personal drama set against the explosive backdrop of a secret war”, the characters are reduced in size and are now American. Scientist Amber Chesborough disappears on a job near the Columbia-Venezuelan border, leading Bambi (her brother) and Prince (her husband) to join forces, despite having a complicated history. However, handily enough, both men have considerable military experience, which hopefully makes the job a little easier. The series follows the complex story of as both men attempt to find her.
The story, directed and exec produced by Oscar-winning Mark Boal (who wrote The Hurt Locker), also delves into the geo-politics of the region, and explores American military strategy within covert operations in developing nations. As one reviewer noted, Boal has “had plenty of experience in penning thriller stories about foreign policy and with complex political implications.”
The first three episodes will stream on Apple TV+ from November 23, then each remaining episode will air weekly until the finale on January 23.
Echo 3 airs on Apple TV+ from November 23.
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