Rogue Heroes

The wildly incongruous but perfectly chosen rock soundtrack, the cool freeze-frames, the fist fights, the banter and of course the battle scenes are all unashamedly exciting – and the Sicily landing, with Mayne’s men dodging Italian bullets under powdery grey moonlight, is as cool as hell. It’s a thrill to watch O’Connell and his boys charge on.

The series picks up around midway through when Stirling comes back into the picture – both Bill (Swindells) and his brother David (Lee), who is set up as the stuffed shirt trying to rein in the vagabonds, but who ends up in some of the best two-handers with O’Connell. Theo Barklem-Briggs’s Reg Seekings gets a well-earned storyline to himself, as does newcomer Jack Barton.

It’s a (sort of) Peaky Blinders in the desert, and it works for me.

Knight will have to go badly astray to not make something highly watchable out of such extraordinary source material. Happily, his heightened, left-field script is perfectly in sync with his subject.

Writer Steven Knight brings his A-game to this vividly realised and relentlessly enthralling account of the creation of the SAS.

Beyond the rock video dynamics, it’s a heartfelt show about combat, courage and the psychological havoc wreaked on even the bravest of souls.

For people raised on a diet of Call of Duty and sub-Tarantino knock-offs, SAS Rogue Heroes will feel like a breath of fresh air. For others, it will feel like an indulgent and messy rewriting of recent(ish) history, where each sequence has a 50:50 chance of hitting a bum note. This self-conscious melange of good and bad produces, unsurprisingly, a product of variegated quality.

Season 1 was phenomenal. Will update further down, after watching the others. However, even though I generally do not post reviews I have to acknowledge what they did here and support this endeavor. This series just hits right for me. It's about a rag tag group turning into a unit whilst battling their own demons whilst fighting in a war. Whilst everything is going on, the series still finds space to show comradery, banter and respect in the unit, which often goes overlooked in nowadays entertainment, but is such a big factor for "realistic" depictions. It's entertaining whilst at the same time being grounded. The cast ist spot on (so far) and the actors show a wide range. I sure hope this will make the heroic deeds of this particular group more known. EDIT: While the quality still holds up in the second season to many degree, I have to adjust my original raving rating (down) for multiple reasons. One being the "dynamic", "fluidity" of the episodes is not as prevalent anymore - which made it very enjoyable to watch in season 1 - and one being the fictive figure of Eve Mansour, which now serves not to a small part as "motivation" for Stirling. Since there is no basis for her - and not denying any female role in such endeavors completely as long as based - her role seems like a blatant attempt for inclusivity and her "role" in the war blown out of proportion. There is no need to force-feed "Love" into these kind of stories, which - while there sure have been such accounts - should at least be believable, sudle and for intents - in such environment - real. Which they aren't, in her case and for this operation as a whole (to my knowledge).

Commandos were created in large part for their symbolic and story telling role. This show proves the point once more. Some pleasant acting and characters, nice work on costumes and settings. The writing tries a very modern approach (deliberate anachronism of the soundtrack with the era is amusing) but while it avoids some clichés (French/Brits interactions), it creates even bigger one that (weak but brave jew, german traitor, femme fatale spy, etc.) that are just so plain ridiculous that it makes me regret they did not opt for pure paradoy à la OS117 or Hogan's heroes. Would have worked better.

Sounds like a winner, right? A British WWII **** origin story. Add some modern kick ass music and action, voila! It's just missing something. I find no connection with any of the characters. They all just come off as a bunch of **** who the military got tired of and let them loose so they didn't have to deal with them. I get the appeal, but this show simply does not make anyone aside from Dominic West remotely interesting or likeable. I know, I know, they're the "rogue heroes" and they got **** done. All due respect to the real SAS, but this show seems to have excised any honor that unit had, and it does a disservice to them.

Two things really bothered me about this series….. Number one: The creation of a frat boy house, and party boys in the desert got a little tiresome; good looking guys drinking, laughing, insulting each other like alpha psi desertium! Seems like an insult to the seriousness of war very unbelievable! Number two: The character of Paddy, who was narcissistic, violent, uncontrollable obnoxious, loudmouth to say the least…after about three or four of these scenes I grew very tiresome of this character……. I was hoping that somebody would leave him out in the desert, or perhaps he might step on a Landmine. How many scenes do we have to see of the same anger again and again and again, especially his treatment of the older Sterling brother was totally unbelievable……. Perhaps somebody should’ve hung him on the cross in the church….. And left him there……. Could not the screen writer come up with some other characters that would be interesting to follow except this loudmouth Violent, obviously mentally ill man…… The abusive behavior became very repetitive and extremely uninteresting after a while …..besides that not a bad series!

Season 1 was OK to some extent, but Season 2 writing, acting and so-called story are absolutely pathetic. What a waste of licence payers' money, as usual.