'Rogue Heroes' Is The Best Steven Knight Show You're Not Watching

Rogue Heroes*, Stephen Knight’s latest series – at least until A Thousand Blows arrives next month – is back for a second season! In the US, Season 1 can be streamed via Prime Video, and Season 2 is on MGM+. While it’s a bummer to have such a solid, well-acted, expensive-looking BBC One series relegated to an obscure platform, it’s a pleasure to report that the second season of Rogue Heroes builds on its first season’s raffish, high-octane strengths and successfully adds more emotional heft as the risks faced by the British Army’s Special Air Service (SAS) units intensify on their way up the boot of Italy in 1943 and 1944.

*(In the UK, this series’s full title is SAS: Rogue Heroes, but we get the abbreviated title in a nod to American audiences’ likely ignorance of the SAS.)

Let’s back up a little, though. Rogue Heroes follows the creation and many missions of the SAS during World War II. The elite commando unit is the brainchild of three initially low-ranking officers: David Stirling, Jock Lewes, and Paddy Mayne (Connor Swindells, Alfie Allen, and Jack O’Connell, respectively). The men’s distinct yet complementary skills and temperaments set the tone for their new, unofficial, and quite ragtag regiment, a tone best described as “only these absolute madmen can save the world from Nazism and fascism, let ‘er rip!”