Not for the faint of heart, the weak of stomach or the connoisseur of art, Cinemax’s original series, “Strike Back,” is, however, perfect for several people I know: the love interest and his friends.
A few weekends back, these guys, armed with my screeners, secluded themselves indoors and watched four straight hours of “Strike Back,” coming up only long enough to grab more food and yell, “They’re really kicking ass down there!” Clearly, they weren’t fighting off terrorists in the basement with nachos, but they were so worked up, it almost seemed like it.
For once, however, these men of no taste were right. There is nothing really new here — disgraced, ex-Delta Force, hard-drinking, whore-loving bad boy is enlisted by (yes, this again) an elite British group of terrorist-catchers called “Section 20.” He must work hand-in-hand with a straight, by-the-book agent whose mindset is as square as his jaw. Or maybe not.
But that doesn’t mean the series doesn’t work. It’s no “MI-5,” but since Cinemax went to the Brits to make the show, it’s as good as you will get from secret agent/terrorist-hunter shows.
On tonight’s premiere, we meet the two main guys. One, a bad boy American, Damien Scott (played by Aussie Sullivan Stapleton), is in a whore house in Kuala Lumpur, while straight-shooter Sgt. Michael Stonebridge (Philip Winchester) is hard at work for Col. Eleanor Grant (Amanda Mealing) somewhere in London.
One of “Section 20’s” best men, John Porter, is being held by terrorists in Pakistan and, unlike what you’d expect, the good guys botch the job, and he gets a bullet to the head — on camera. Only the bad boy — who knew and had worked with the dead special forces agent — can help find the operative that Porter was in the midst of turning when he was captured.
Stonebridge is sent to Kuala Lumpur, where he finds Scott in the middle of a bare-knuckle fighting ring, getting his nose bashed in.
Will Scott do it? Will he give up a life of whoring, drinking, fighting and whatever the hell else he does that everyman wishes he could do to fight terrorists? No — but he will take the job fighting terrorists.
With stories ripped from the headlines (tonight’s is taken from the terrorist attack in Mumbai in 2008), and a crew of special forces agents serving as consultants, no matter how far-fetched the stories seem, most of them, I’m told, are based on fact.
Because it’s Brit-produced, don’t expect your favorites to last long, as the British have no problem killing off even the biggest, most-beloved characters. Good action, good characters and, besides, it’s the only show in the history of TV where the term, “f-cking pr-ck” is code. I mean, you gotta love that, no?