★★★★★ 0/5

Airdate: Rogue Heroes

UK drama about how the SAS was formed gets the TV treatment from Peaky Blinders' own Steven Knight.

5
Leave a comment

Rowdy UK drama Rogue Heroes, created and written by Steven Knight (Peaky Blinders, Taboo), is finally coming to SBS next month.

The series is a dramatised account of how the SAS was formed under extraordinary circumstances in the darkest days of WWII. It follows a crew of renegade men who are a self-proclaimed band of oddities, gentlemen, and pirates who rail against the status quo of service to do things a little differently.

Connor Swindells (Sex Education, Vigil), Jack O’Connell (Skins, The North Water) and Alfie Allen (Jojo Rabbit, Game of Thrones) lead an ensemble cast with Dominic West (The Wire, The Crown) and Sofia Boutella (Modern Love, Atomic Blonde).

The cast is joined by Amir El Masry, Theo Barklem-Biggs, Corin Silva, Jacob Ifan, Dónal Finn, Jacob McCarthy, César Domboy, Miles Jupp  and Jason Watkins.

Connor Swindells said: “The writing is phenomenal, Steven Knight is a genius, so it’s brilliantly written. The characters are flawed, they’re humans as much as they are heroes. There was too much that drew me to this project to turn away from it.”

Jack O’Connell said: “Paddy Mayne’s story is so cinema-worthy, so TV-worthy, that I was already aware of him through being sent scripts and hearing rumours about certain projects that never came into fruition. When this one came along, I was already geared to wanting to be involved.”

Alfie Allen said: “Jock was pushing the boundaries in terms of what he would make his men do. That would not win him fans, but it would later cement his place as a pioneer in SAS history. That was definitely one thing that really attracted me towards playing him – he was such a revered character in the SAS.”

Rogue Heroes is directed by Tom Shankland (The Serpent, The Missing), with Stephen Smallwood (The Serpent, Patrick Melrose) as producer.

Set in Cairo, 1941. David Stirling (Swindells) is an eccentric young officer, bored and frustrated with the failings and shortcomings of the military authorities and their handling of the current war strategy. Convinced that traditional commando units don’t work, a view shared by another young officer, the inventive and disciplined Jock Lewes (Allen), the pair create a radical plan that flies in the face of all accepted rules of modern warfare and try to convince their friend, firebrand and poet, Robert Blair ‘Paddy’ Mayne (O’Connell) to join their mission.

Stirling fights for permission to recruit soldiers for a small undercover unit that will create mayhem behind enemy lines. Men of a certain sort. The sweepings of public schools and military prisons, men who do not obey. Men who only need one order. ‘Go. Kill. Return. Go again’. More rebels than soldiers, Stirling’s team are every bit as complicated, flawed, and reckless as they are astonishingly brave and heroic.

With the assistance of Lieutenant Colonel Dudley Wrangel Clarke (West), a master of strategic deception in British secret intelligence in the Middle East, Stirling’s unit gains an identity and a name, the Special Air Service (SAS), but then it’s up to Stirling and his men to prove their strategy of parachuting into the desert and attacking and neutralising enemy airbases under cover of darkness will work.

The series was produced by Kudos – a Banijay UK company and distributed by Banijay Rights.

Rogue Heroes will be subtitled on SBS On Demand in Simplified Chinese and Arabic.

Wednesday 5 April at 9:30pm on SBS.

5 Responses

  1. This series is based on Ben Macintyre’s book and having read the book (some years ago) the screenplay does follow the story but with a bit of creative license thrown in, a story which has been embellished by the popularity of SAS mythology in recent years. In my opinion the saving grace for this show, which is designed for WWII and action fans, is the set production and attention to period detail including excellent desert vistas and the recognition of near forgotten long range desert group, who were already very active gathering intelligence behind enemy lines before the SAS were thought of. For me Rogue Heroes showed enough potential for another season of special service activity during WWII, possibly located in Greece, (which was a fiasco) or Libya, where there was an attempted capture of the famous General Rommel at Beda Littoria (which was a heroic though incompetent and badly planned disaster).

    1. LRDG and SASR were 2 different units with different focuses-LRDG concentrated on observing and reporting Axis movements without engaging the enemy and SASR undertook ground raids on airfields and supply dumps etc-this was reflected in the vehicles they used-Chevrolet light trucks with 2 wheel drive and very limited armament for long range ops for LRDG and in the case of SASR Jeeps with 4 wheel drive and every weapon that could be piled on for hit and run raids.

  2. I didn’t enjoy This . It may as well have been a documentary as there wasn’t a lot of storyline in it to make you care about anyone in it

  4. An English mate said we get stitched up in the beginning of the first episode… which was the most amusing thing about it for him before he stopped watching the OTT lying bloody thing.

Leave a Reply