Jamie Dornan is an international film star and former Hugo Boss and Calvin Klein model. But the Hollywood actor’s true talent may be his ability to look bewildered regardless of the situation. He was annoying throughout the Fifty Shades of Gray movies, and the less clothes he wore, the more disoriented he became. He managed to stay in formal attire for most of season 2 of The Tourist (BBC One, New Year’s Day, 9pm), but once again that superhuman glare of confusion appeared.
The Tourist series 1 was a fun amnesia thriller set in the Australian outback. Imagine Christopher Nolan’s Memento fused with the gentler moments of Mad Max. For the sequel, Dornan is keen to film closer to home to be with his family, and the action will primarily take place in what appears to be Wicklow.
Will a British drama “do” Ireland again? Yes, our hearts are all sinking. But it’s okay. “The Tourist” doesn’t go as far as last year’s “Woman in the Wall,” which set out to investigate the wrongdoings of single-parent families but ended up being an irreverent homage to the Dumb Believables. It’s not like rolling.
Tourists are just incredible. In fact, it’s hilarious and free, but still addictive in its ridiculousness. By the end of episode one, you feel like you’re munching on a bottomless bag of salt and vinegar potato chips. I don’t know if it’s good for me, but I want to keep eating it.
Anything “oilish” is not good. County Antrim actor Conor McNeil plays a country Yarrow Garda who doesn’t know how to do his job, but has a kind soul beyond his peasant stupidity. There are also suggestions that Ireland is in a technological dark age. In one scene, a character makes a call using a rotary telephone. There is certainly no hustle and bustle of the city. The criminal environment in the British hinterland is hospitable. This is Ireland, but could also be Yorkshire/Wales/Cornwall/Scotland…
Once you get through that, you may have to take a deep breath or two, but you can see it. As noted, Dornan is a one-trick actor. But it’s a nice trick – the way he seems completely bewildered by everything thrown into his life.
In this case, life conspired to bring his character, Elliot, into contact with a shadowy figure from his past. He noticed these connections traveling by train across Australia with his girlfriend Helen (Danielle MacDonald) in series one. He contacted me from Ireland and we arranged to meet. But then his assailants, who were waiting outside a cafe in (what appeared to be) Wicklow, tied him to the back of a car with British registration plates and took him to a torture dungeon.
Helen has her own challenges. When gardaí finally arrive, she has to teach MacNeill’s caretaker, Det Slater, how to do her job. Olwen Fuere then appears as Elliot’s mother. She confronted gardaí and later killed her underling with a knife to her forehead. she is scary
Mommy Maniac isn’t afraid of Det Slater, but maybe he should be. We then learn that he has an affair with the sex doll he keeps downstairs in his one-room apartment.
This surreal flourish is the trademark touch of tourism writers Harry and Jack Williams, who specialize in hyperactive thrillers set in Britain. They transplanted that formula to the old country and created something like Tarantino’s The Quiet Man. It’s quite watchable – and fingers crossed that Part 1 is about to get the Father Ted-isms out of that system.