Identity crisis
Pitched to star Jamie Dornan as “Killing Eve meets Memento”, Stan’s new six-part series The Tourist ups the ante in the Aussie Outback
Mystery road: Jamie Dornan stars in Stan’s
The Tourist. F rom The Bourne Identity to Memento, memory loss has set the scene for many gripping onscreen tales – an amnesiac protagonist wakes up and must retrace their steps to discover their true identity. But when it’s kicked off by a high-speed game of catand-mouse in the anxietyinducing vastness of the Aussie Outback, there’s even more urgency to discover the truth.
And that’s the intriguing premise of Stan’s new sixpart thriller The Tourist, from the acclaimed writers of The
Missing, Baptiste and Liar. Northern Irish heartthrob Jamie Dornan (The Fall) plays “The Man”, a nameless Irishman who is run off the road by a menacing truck driver in the Outback.
When he later wakes up in hospital, he has no memory of who he is or what he’s doing there, except for a mysterious note in his pocket directing him to a meeting the next day.
As The Man tries to rapidly piece his life together, he quickly realises that an unknown group of dangerous people are hunting him down.
Danielle McDonald co-stars as a rookie cop assigned to The Man’s case. The series also stars Doctor Doctor’s Shalom Brune-Franklin as a mysterious waitress and Mindhunter’s Damon
Herriman as a determined police inspector.
The gripping tale’s influences are clear from the get-go, particularly references to Steven Spielberg’s 1971 debut film
Duel, but the producers also strike their own unique offbeat tone, more in the
quirky vein of Killing Eve
or Fargo.
There are also parallels with terrifying Outback
thrillers Wake In Fright (1971) and Wolf Creek (2005), which also use the stark landscape to chilling effect.
Dornan, who is generating Oscar buzz for his role in Kenneth Branagh’s semiautobiographical drama
Belfast and stole the show alongside comedian Kristen Wiig in last year’s hilarious
comedy Barb and Star
Go to Vista Del Mar, says The Tourist has “a wee bit of everything”.
“It’s kind of genrebending,” Dornan told Stan’s Renee Bargh.
“[Co-creators] Jack and Harry Williams challenged the idea of staying in your lane in terms of a genre or type of television show or what you’d expect, and they’ve thrown everything at this. It’s very unexpected and everything that ensues is filled with very, very colourful characters, and crazy plotlines. It’s pure entertainment.”