CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews the weekend’s TV shows: it takes a master spy in lady’s dress to revive SAS exploits
SAS Rogue Heroes
Valuation: ****
black sand
Valuation: **
With crooked pearls and eyeshadow smudged halfway across his face, Dominic West staggers out of bed in a velvet dress and takes an invigorating sip of whiskey.
You’ll be forgiven for thinking this is yet another slanderous fiction from The Crown, in which West plays future King Charles III as an obsessively vain and treacherous conspirator. This time around, however, the Old Etonian actor takes liberties with a very different real-life character in SAS Rogue Heroes (BBC1), Cairo spymaster Dudley Clarke.
Dominic West plays Cairo spymaster Dudley Clarke in SAS Rogue Heroes on BBC One
Whether the Brigadier was actually a crossdresser is disputed. At the start of the war, Dudley was arrested in woman’s clothing he was allegedly wearing for an undercover operation – although a photo of him in high heels and elbow-length gloves suggests it was not a convincing disguise.
I suspect writer Steven Knight was inspired by Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet and the character of Lieutenant Commander Scobie, a British spy in Egypt with a penchant for hanging around the docks in women’s clothing.
Wherever the idea came from, West’s intervention gives the story a much-needed twist. Without him, SAS Rogue Heroes runs the risk of becoming a bit monotonous, despite the frequent explosions of violence and poetic escapes of wordy dialogue.
All other characters only want one thing: kill Nazis. This was summed up in a segment where aristocratic outsider David Stirling (Connor Swindells) rounded up recruits. To earn a spot in his special unit, a soldier had only to manifest an insatiable dislike for Germans.
Pictured together from left to right: Jock Lewes (portrayed by Alfie Allen), David Stirling (portrayed by Connor Swindells) and Paddy Mayne (portrayed by Jack O’Connell)
Stirling’s main allies, the brawler Paddy Mayne (Jack O’Connell) and the uptight Jock Lewes (Alfie Allen), share the same goal. So are the dashing generals and the temperamental French spy Eve (Sofia Boutella). They may have different ideas about the best way to win the war, but none of them have anything else in mind. There are no subplots, no distractions.
Stirling’s only plan is to blow up Luftwaffe planes on the ground like they’re going to shoot grouse before they have a chance to take off, and by the time he’d explained that for the eighth time it got tiresome.
West as the wildly theatrical and selfish eccentric Dudley enlivened the action. Stirling is so determined that we know he’ll pull through with his plan, even if everyone gets killed in the process.
But Dudley is capable of sabotaging anything and everything, including himself. That’s much more interesting.
Things needed to be revitalized in Black Sands (Alibi), an Icelandic detective series that moves as fast as a melting glacier. Aldis Amah Hamilton, who also co-wrote the show, plays detective Anita Elinardottir, who returns to the seaside town where she grew up just in time to lead an investigation into the death of a German tourist.
Aldis Amah Hamilton, who is also a co-writer of the show, plays detective Anita Elinarottir in Black Sands
Even by Scandi Noir standards, the first episode was uneventful until the last moment. Our heroine had been shopping and flirting with the cashier at the local supermarket for about ten minutes when a woman staggered into the store, covered in blood.
Worse, she didn’t speak Icelandic! Can you imagine?
Arctic Circle crime fiction fans can overlook an uneven pacing, but the behavior of the police in Black Sands creates a far more uncomfortable problem. Two young officers guarding the dead woman joked about whether they found her attractive.
Such callousness is hard to forgive after the sickening news of police sharing photos of female murder victims.