Rogue Heroes Season 2, on MGM+

Eight decades after WWII, many in the United Kingdom now question why Lt. Col. Robert Blair “Paddy” Mayne never received his nation’s highest military honor, the Victoria Cross (VC), nor has any other member of the Special Air Service (SAS), the commando unit he led throughout North Africa and Italy. In fact, no subsequent SAS commando has received the VC, which is strange, considering their valorous history. The hit show prompting these questions also offers an obvious explanation. The snobby officer class happily let the SAS fight and die on their behalf, but they never considered the highly effective but ill-disciplined unit proper soldiers. The disdain was mutual, at least it is throughout the second season of creator-writer Steven Knight’s Rogue Heroes (a.k.a. SAS Rogue Heroes), still adapted from Ben McIntyre’s nonfiction book, which premieres tomorrow on MGM+.

At the end of season one, Lt. Col. David Sterling, the co-founder of the SAS and then-Major Mayne’s commanding officer had been captured and interned in an Italian POW compound. Consequently, he has far less screentime in season two. However, Mayne more than capably picks up the slack. He also gets a new Sterling, Lt. Col. Bill Sterling, who is much more a proper officer according to the way top brass thinks. Of course, Mayne considers him an aristocratic dilettante. Nevertheless, the new Sterling is a better, more conscientious advocate for the SAS, or the SRS (Special Raiding Service), as they are temporarily renamed, than Mayne realizes.

Regardless, Montgomery and Allied command continues sending the SAS/SRS on foolhardy advance missions, paving the way for the regular army’s Italian invasion, because they keep surviving, killing many Germans and fascists in the process. Given their track record, Eve Mansour, the Algerian-born Free-French spy, who also happened to be David Sterling’s lover, hopes to rendezvous with Paddy Mayne, hoping to support his efforts and possibly glean some intel for De Gaulle regarding the expected invasion of France. Surely, the SAS (as they insist on calling themselves) will be in thick of any such operation.

One way or another, the SAS/SRS keeps rolling, but they are all not completely immune to the horrors of war, just the increasingly in/famous Paddy Mayne, who does not merely laugh in he face of death—he double-dog-dares it. There is no question Mayne is the star of season two and Jack O’Connell runs with it.

Indeed, O’Connell swaggers, snarls, and howls like a champion. You would almost think O’Connell was classically trained, given Mayne commanding bravura poetry recitations—one of the commando officer’s many eccentricities that worries Staff Sgt Jim Almonds, his designated conscience and voice of reason. That is a tough duty to draw.

It is also hard sharing the screen with O’Connell, but Corin Silva and Theo Barklem-Biggs shine developing season two’s other standout characters, Almonds and Sgt. Reg Seekings. Indeed, Barklem-Biggs would generate awards buzz in a more perfect world for the way he portrays Seekings’ PTSD (as we would call it today), as well as his righteous fury at the civilian casualties resulting from the National Socialists’ ruthlessness.

Despite his limited scenes, Connor Swindells delivers an amazing physical performance depicting the extreme physical brutality of David Sterling’s POW experience. Ironically, Gwilym Lee also makes a strong impact with his subtle, cerebral portrayal of Bill Sterling, who emerges as the unlikeliest of heroes in Rogue Heroes. However, the continued presence of Eve Mansour makes little sense once the action shifts to the Italian theater. It is clear she was just shoehorned in, but Sofia Boutella still has finely turned moments reacting to the horrors of war and compassionately consoling Seekings.

Knight’s writing combines Naval aviator cockiness of Top Gun with the dysfunction of Altman’s MASH, adding realistic large-scale battle sequences worthy of big-screen films, like Fury. They were an unruly lot, but Knight clearly suggests you must be a little crazy to charge into artillery fire—especially since the Allies were losing badly in North Africa when the SAS was founded, which meant the Suez and the entire war effort was in dire jeopardy.

Knight actually manages to impart a lot of the big strategic picture, while doubling-down on Mayne’s compulsive defiance of authority. Rather cleverly, he uses an anachronistic head-banging soundtrack to emphasize the rebellious misfit nature of Mayne and his SAS commandos. The result is consistently hilarious and simultaneously deadly serious, particularly in light of the revelation Hitler ordered the immediate execution of all SAS personnel taken prisoner, in gross contradiction of the Geneva Convention. In fact, season two might even be more fun than season one. Very highly recommended for fans of military dramas, season two of Rogue Heroes starts streaming tomorrow (1/12) on MGM+.