I did not expect SAS Rogue Heroes to be as much of a blast as it has turned out to be. Obviously, anything by Peaky Blinders’ Steven Knight is unlikely to be a snoozefest, but this high-octane series has been a total triumph. Each of the five episodes has ramped up the pace, the heart and the drama so much that I found myself not only hooked on the on-screen antics of the nascent Special Air Service, but also reading about the real-life history behind the show (adapted from Ben MacIntyre’s book of the same name) to find out which of the details are “mostly true”, as the cheeky disclaimer at the start has it.
As the final episode reports for duty (Sunday 9.15pm, BBC One) – though if you’ve managed to avoid gobbling up the lot on iPlayer, you have more self-control than me – we have “only the dreamer and the madman left”. The elite group of French paratroopers who have joined the SAS in the desert were supposed to have been trained by Paddy Mayne, but as Mayne is often a man who “needs to be put in a fucking cage”, the programme did not go as smoothly as hoped. Nevertheless, there are more airstrips to be destroyed, if the tide of the war has any chance of turning, and these men are ready to repeat their attacks. “Go. Kill. Return. Go again,” as David Stirling (Connor Swindells) puts it.
The finale goes again, and goes bigger. Churchill (Jason Watkins, joining a long line of recent actors having a bash, including Brian Cox, Gary Oldman and John Lithgow in The Crown) visits Cairo and meets Stirling to find out what the SAS might need to urge the war effort on. As final episodes go, this does not disappoint – and of course it doesn’t dare peter out. Knight has been building to a bombastic ending, and it is as rich in emotion as in action.
The stealthiness of its appeal is a curious thing. I confess I am not particularly drawn to war stories, so I approached this a little warily. More fool me, because this has been a brilliant drama. The cast is excellent, teasing out the conflict between these wildly different characters, forced into the same circumstances by war. Each is a type, yet afforded great complexity, whether that is Dominic West as the slippery Dudley Clarke, trying to navigate duty and personal pride, or the SAS, along with the Free French (and handful of Germans) who have joined them.
At this point, it is also a platonic love story of sorts. Connor Swindells’ Stirling is Scottish aristocracy, born to the role of officer, yet uncomfortable in the rigidity of it, and he kicks out whenever he can. (An alternative title for the show could have been SAS Daddy Issues.) Jack O’Connell’s Mayne is an artistic and sensitive soul who is also the most ruthless when it comes to violence and killing unarmed men. They all have a death wish, but it comes from somewhere unique. Watching them work out how to harness each other’s “mad fucker” tendencies is a treat.
For all of its bombast, which is hugely exciting, the scenes in which Mayne and Stirling interact on a more personal level are tender and lovely. This is the show’s heart. But its head is also silly and funny, and often, the absurdity of war is played for laughs, because so much of this story is just ridiculous. Things fall into place, or fall apart, often on a whim, or a crazy idea, or a coincidence. People live and die – and they do die, often, because it makes sense that a show like this is not shy of killing off its main characters – and the story continues, mildly stunned, but pressing on regardless. Above all, it doesn’t judge behaviours, nor does it force the viewer to judge them. It presents the story and has a ball with it.
In an era of forced moral certainty, its ambiguity is a glass of cold water in the desert. Or should that be a bottle of cold beer and some spit-roasted gazelle?
