'Rogue Heroes's Season 2 Trailer Reminds Us Why The Show Is So Good
As the casualties of the streaming wars fall, we are in the awkward stage where failing streaming services are picking up programming that no one watches. It is a pity when shows that land on Sundance Now or IFC don't get simultaneous releases on Acorn TV because no one subscribes to the former streaming services, so no one knows they are there. The same is true for MGM+, which was only rechristened from Epix a year or two ago when Amazon took possession of it. Despite releasing high-profile titles like A Spy Among Friends and Belgravia: The Next Chapter, MGM+ has gained no traction. It's a tragedy, as that's where one of the BBC's best shows, SAS Rogue Heroes, is currently hiding.
Based on Ben MacIntyre’s 2016 non-fiction book of the same name, Rogue Heroes (Epix perplexingly dropped the SAS when it landed the rights to the series) was Steven Knight's first follow-up to Peaky Blinders, taking his trademark "dark'n'gritty historical period drama" sensibilities and applying them to one of the most fascinating aspects of World War II, the development of the special forces unit known as SAS. For Americans who don't know, the SAS stands for Special Air Service, and the original unit was credited with being instrumental to the Allies' success in World War II. However, they were a shoestring operation who faked it until they made it, a perfect pairing with Knight's type of storytelling.
Connor Swindells (Sex Education) stars as real-life Lieutenant Archibald David Stirling and Jack O’Connell (Skins) as Lieutenant Robert Blair Mayne, better known as Paddy, the two men who co-founded the SAS. They co-star with Dominic West (The Crown), who portrays Lieutenant Colonel Dudley Clarke, the real-life mastermind behind some of the British Army’s crazier World War II stunts. Since women were only first admitted into the SAS in 2018,* costar Sofia Boutella (The Kingsman) pays the fictional French intelligence officer Eve Mansour.
