Sunday’s SAS Rogue Heroes – about the founding of perhaps Britain’s most famous regiment – began with a revealing variation on the usual caption in fact-based dramas about how everything in them really happened, except the things that didn’t. ‘The events depicted which seem most unbelievable,’ it read, ‘are mostly true.’
And from there the same sense of somewhat incredulous, head-shaking admiration for its subjects remained. The unexpected result was a 2022 BBC drama that took an unashamedly gung-ho approach to macho heroism – and that, give or take a spot of swearing and heavy-metal music, didn’t feel very different in tone from those classic British second world war films of the 1950s. So much so, in fact, that you couldn’t help wondering whether any writer less hot than Steven Knight (creator of Peaky Blinders) would have been allowed to get away with it.
We were, mind you, reminded of how hopeless the British Army was in the early years of the conflict. The opening scene featured a 1941 convoy off to save Tobruk running out of petrol mid-desert. This latest cock-up was the last straw for David Stirling (Connor Swindells), who, aghast at being denied the chance to slaughter some Germans, headed straight to a Cairo bar. Once there, he downed several whiskies and shared with a pair of Australian soldiers his theory of how the fighting should be conducted – i.e. very violently indeed. ‘Eyes,’ he pointed out, ‘are for thumbs to push into the brain.’ (Not surprisingly, the Aussies immediately finished their drinks and left.)
This was a 2022 BBC drama that took an unashamedly gung-ho approach to macho heroism
Luckily, Stirling wasn’t the only frustrated British semi-psychopath in north Africa. Outside Tobruk, Jock Lewes (Alfie Allen) conducted a highly practical seminar for his men on how to kill 50 Germans.
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