I’m bailing out! SAS drama is a cringefest
SAS: Rogue Heroes BBC1, BBC iPlayer
If you’d asked Jeremy Clarkson to write a TV series then SAS: Rogue Heroes would have been the likely result.
Cocky Brits in aviators skidding around the North African desert in jeeps to the sound of AC/DC’s Highway To Hell is what you imagine Clarkson reckons is the height of cool. For the rest of us though the show’s desperate efforts to convince us that this ain’t your daddy’s war is a bit of a cringe.
Of course this show is from the same Peaky Blinders writer who successfully convinced us gangs in early 20th Century Birmingham had hipster hairdos and strutted around listening to Nick Cave.
Like Peaky Blinders, Rogue
Heroes wants to have it both ways...and I don’t mean Dominic West’s gender-fluid intelligence officer.
As with Tommy Shelby’s exploits, the show wants us to know all the swaggering violence is totally awesome.
The inevitable PTSD resulting from those sorts of shenanigans is mostly just an excuse to show our heroes brooding a bit before they go out and stab someone again. What larks!
If that cognitive dissonance doesn’t bother you then there’s fun to be had with SAS: Rogue Heroes.
The homoeroticism isn’t so much subtext as supertext with Jack O’Connell’s Paddy Mayne; although perhaps that’s only enjoyable because Clarkson wouldn’t like it...?