'The Tourist' Season 1 is a Smooth Ride Down Under
It’s difficult to appreciate the first season of The Tourist from the specific British telly context in which it first aired two years ago, a context that would help explain why it failed to make a stateside splash when it later came to streaming on Max (beyond the streaming service’s complete failure to market it). British broadcasters, especially the flagship BBC, try to premiere a splashy, eye-catching New Year’s Day series geared towards whole households wanting to stay in and watch something exciting.
During the Jodie Whitaker era, Doctor Who moved its holiday special from Christmas to New Year’s Day; the James Norton-starring crime epic McMafia (another show that was DOA in the States) took the treasured 9 p.m. drama slot in 2018; Happy Valley Season 3 launched at the same time in 2022. Trust us, it’s a big deal. So it’s understandable why The Tourist made a sizable dent in Britain in the early days of 2022 – as an expensive, international romp with an attractive lead in Irishman Jamie Dornan that launched on one of the most-watched seasonal timeslots in UK programming, it had a lot of good faith behind it. Thankfully, it’s easy to appreciate The Tourist on its own terms – thanks to a nifty balance between sincere emotion and not-to-be-taken-tremendously-seriously thriller plotting, it’s reliably entertaining and a smooth, pleasurable watch.
Dornan plays an amnesiac set loose across the dry, sparse Australian outback on the hunt for his memories and the reason why several people want him dead. After being pursued by a monstrous truck right out of Roadgames or Duel, “The Man” suffers a tremendous car crash and wakes up in hospital without even recollection of his name. He’s attended by local probationary constable Helen Chambers (Danielle Macdonald), an eager-to-please rookie whose professional responsibilities towards the crash victim are soon outmatched by her fascination with the many questions that surround The Man. (It helps he’s the only person around without a regional Australian accent and who looks like Jamie Dornan.)
