ON SCREEN: The SAS

SAS: Who Dares Wins (9pm, Ch4) puts more recruits through their paces for the strict British Special Air Service training regime. Here’s how the SAS shapes up on screen…

Who Dares Wins

Like the Channel 4 series, this 1982 film took its name from the famous SAS motto. It’s a fictional story, inspired by the 1980 siege of the Iranian Embassy in London, and stars The Professionals’ Lewis Collins (above) as Captain Peter Skellen.

The Fourth Protocol Released in 1987, this Cold War thriller, based on a novel by Frederick Forsyth, stars Pierce Brosnan as a rebel KGB man. He comes up against Michael Caine’s

MI5 officer in an attempt to trigger an unsanctioned nuclear attack on British soil; a crack SAS team arrives just in the nick of time.

Bravo Two Zero and The One That Got Away

Ex-SAS men Andy McNab and Chris Ryan both wrote accounts of their service during the Gulf War in 1991, and both books were adapted for the screen. Paul McGann stars in the Chris Ryan adaptation, shown in 1996. The 1999 miniseries, based on McNab’s book, stars Sean Bean.

6 Days This 2017 movie tells the story of the 1980 Iranian Embassy siege. Jamie Bell (below), of Billy Elliot fame, stars as Rusty Firmin, the Corporal who led the rescue operation. Bell met with Firmin to get his take on how events unfolded, and also underwent intensive training, SAS-style.