Review by C.J. Bunce
You wouldn’t think the leading male of the Australian series The Tourist was the same guy who starred in the Fifty Shades of Grey movies. Jamie Dornan apparently can act, and he demonstrates it as the nameless character “The Man,” a mixed-up, turned-around, bad guy who has lost his memory. Not much has looked like the original Mad Max so much since that 1979 action flick introduced outsiders to the desolate wastelands of the Outback. The Tourist has the kind of austere vibe TV audiences saw in the Shetland series, beginning with an homage to Steven Spielberg’s The Duel, with a ruthless bounty hunter stopping at nothing to get his target. If you like the quirky characters of Glitch, Deadloch, Troppo, and Mystery Road, you’ll want to catch up on the first season, now streaming on Netflix, before Season 2 arrives on this year’s Leap Day.
Not all Australian series have such strange denizens from the weird corners of the country–note I didn’t include Harrow in the above list. But co-star Danielle Macdonald would fit right in with the inhabitants of Deadloch. Macdonald plays Probationary Constable Helen Chambers, an in-training cop who lacks self-worth and demonstrates that via her choice of the worst possible fiancé Australia could provide. That’s We Interrupt this Broadcast’s Greg Larsen’s Ethan Krum, whose self-interest is painful to watch. Chambers is so completely desperate to escape her existence that she is quick to latch onto the first hairy, never-changes-his-clothes-and-must-smell-pretty-bad man with no name she’s called out to interview.
Series creators Harry Williams and Jack Williams play around with the amnesia trope, giving Dornan opportunities in turn to react to the barrage of elements thrown his way, from an ex-girlfriend bombing a restaurant, to an acquaintance calling for help from his burial underground, to a giant ogre dead-set to kill him for an LSD-hooked villain who thinks his undead brother is still accompanying him everywhere. Yes, that’s plenty of weird for fans of weird. Is The Man a good guy or a bad guy? In many ways this is Philip K. Dick’s We Can Remember it For You Wholesale aka Total Recall in a contemporary rural outback setting.
Ólafur Darri Ólafsson (The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, Fantastic Beasts, The Meg, Quarry, NOS4A2) plays that ogre, the rare villain given an almost 1960s Western presence, someone who might have been played by Orson Welles or George Kennedy in another era. His dialogue is surprisingly fun, as he practically chants his own brand of age-old lies before he cuts his next victim down. He’s working for an even more loathsome character, Alex Dimitriades (Ghost Ship) as Greek mafia type named Kostas, a guy so impulsive that he’s driven to chase The Man and his former girlfriend across the world to make them pay for spiting him. In addition to a town full of odd local denizens, rounding out the cast is Shalom Brune-Franklin (Roadkill, War of the Worlds) as girlfriend/ex-girlfriend Victoria/Geri/Mel/Emma, the only character who seems to know what’s really going on.
Ben Wheeler and Geoffrey Hall convey a Fargo meets Pulp Fiction action setting with their pristine cinematography. Dornan and Brune-Franklin make the series work with likeable characters, and the angst of Macdonald’s modern woman ready to bust out will give viewers someone to root for (while wanting to strangle her for her poor choices).
At six episodes the first season is an easy series to get into, worth adding to your queue. Catch up with the first season now, since The Tourist Season 2 arrives on Netflix February 29, 2024.
