'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.)

Helen is an oddity among the ensemble of The Tourist’s supporting cast in that she’s the only one who really is who she says she is for the whole series. It’s probably why, against sound judgment, she and The Man are so drawn to each other; it’s difficult to be duplicitous when you can’t remember what you’re supposed to hide, and despite the danger he exudes, there’s an openness to The Man that responds quickly to Helen’s upright and at times naive sense of justice. As the series continues, The Tourist trusts the dynamic between the pair more and more, and a midpoint development proves a terrific opportunity to flesh out Dornan and Macdonald’s chemistry into an honest, reflective partnership.

The rest of the characters keep the six-hour runtime engaging. Shalom Brune-Franklin shines as Luci, a waitress who feigns to be a stranger but is really a charismatic but guarded clue to The Man’s past. Comedian Greg Larsen plays Helen’s maddeningly thoughtless fiance; a Southern-accented and stetson-ed Ólafur Darri Ólafsson chills as a Fargo-esque violent mercenary; two-time Charles Manson performer Damon Herriman shows off his formidable cop prowess as a brusque, shrewd detective on The Man’s tail. 

It’s noteworthy that, unlike many Outback Thrillers, The Tourist evens out the usual foul and malicious Australian bit parts and background characters with a good deal of very nice and helpful ones, a choice that brings welcome subversive levity to the intense story but does undermine the attempts to evoke true grit and edge.

The Tourist cribs quite liberally from many sources – notably the harsh homegrown Outback Thriller and the uncompromising New Wave sensibilities of Wake in Fright. In terms of the amnesia plot, there’s no one single text these stories are indebted to (although Memento and The Bourne Identity may disagree), but it’s hard to feel like the series' dogged footstep-tracing, and bubbling paranoia is anything other than a new coat of paint on the archetypal amnesiac structure. It’s not until the last 2.5 hours that the season delivers on propulsive entertainment – despite a steady drip of enticing reveals, the story too routinely directs characters between the same several locations without that much narrative invention.

The series is flashy – it's got a great color palette, especially when it leans into those Aussie burnt oranges – but The Tourist's attractive visual surface clearly lacks thoughtfulness, and all the moments of stylistic fizz are more a symptom of justifying its oversized budget rather than a clear aesthetic vision from directors Daniel Nettheim and Chris Sweeney. The twists satisfy without wowing, but a nifty final act makes it clear what this first season is best at — robust and affecting characterization. They may not be tremendously deep, but the show is skilled at making us care about the ensemble; The Tourist isn’t great fun because of jaw-dropping suspense and shocks, but because it wants us to care about the people caught up between the twists.

The Tourist Season 1 is streaming on Netflix with all episodes. Season 2 will arrive on Thursday, February 29, 2024.