Redirect to an external link not working in Laravel 5

I am trying to make a redirect to an external link. In Laravel 4.2 I just do:

return Redirect::away($external);

and it works.

But in Laravel 5.3 I am having challenges. The old style (Laravel 4) redirect is not working, neither are the following:

 return redirect($external);
 return redirect()->away($external);

There's no error but nothing happens either.

Any idea?

via Chebli Mohamed