STRIKE BACK 1.5 & 1.6

WRITER: Robert Murphy
DIRECTOR: Edward Hall
GUEST CAST: Ewan Bremner, Toby Stephens, Alexander Siddig, Shelley Conn & Jodhi May

[SPOILERS] The two-part finale to this surprisingly enjoyable action-drama was my least favourite of the three stories, partly because it used so many elements we've seen in the previous hours (the Middle East setting, another "buddy" dynamic), although the machinations with the US government was a nice touch.

This week, Scottish computer hacker Gerald Baxter (Ewan Bremner, in full-on grinning loon mode) became a target for the British government after successful cracking the UK's weapons security and redirecting a British fighter's missile towards US troops under attack from the Taliban. John Porter (Richard Armitage) was sent into Helmand Province, Afghanistan, to extract Baxter before his technical know-how can be used to cause further, tragic incidents. While there, Porter was captured by a tribal leader called Zahir Sharq (Alexander Siddig) who's working for the Taliban, and comes to realize that Baxter's mentally-unstable and was working undercover for the CIA

Back in London, US liaison Frank Arlington (Toby Stephens) arrived to put pressure on Collinson's (Andrew Lincoln) Section 20 to hand over Baxter and Porter, so both can be killed to spare the blushes of the US government for sending a crackpot like Baxter back out into the field. The White House also want to appease Sharq because they think he'll become a key figure in the Middle East and is someone they can deal with politically in the future.

There were some good ideas in these final episodes, and it made a change to see much of the drama come from talkier moments in London between Collinson and Frank, as the Anglo-American "special relationship" was put under a terrible strain. The storyline with Porter and Baxter was less interesting, although there was entertainment value in a no-nonsense hero like Porter having to mix with loose cannon Baxter, whose loyalties (the Americans, the British, the Afghans) were incredibly slippery. And the show continued to do a very impressive job with the action sequences, particularly in the rather gruesome spurts of blood that eject from bodies and heads whenever a bullet finds its target.

The final episodes also brought the series' recurring storyline to a close, with Layla (Jodhi May) exposing how it was actually Collinson who accidentally shot his own men during the 2003 hostage-retrieval mission in Baghdad, having tested the bullet shrapnel from a comatose victim's body after he passed away. Collinson, facing a career-ending court martial over his mistake and decision to pin the blame on innocent comrade Porter, found an excuse to fly into Afghanistan with the intention of killing Porter himself. The final moments between Collinson and Porter inside a hut surrounded by Taliban, forced to put the past behind them to save their own skins, was an effective way to bring their story to an end, while also leaving the series on a cliffhanger once an injured Collinson blew himself up and Porter was seen driving off across the desert with the US military still desperate to eliminate him.

Overall, I don't have any new insight to mention about Strike Back. I'm a little worried the show has already started to repeat itself, as it will become tiresome if we just keep getting variations on the "man-on-a-mission to retrieve a hostage/prisoner/asset" from countries where the terrain matches that of South Africa where the series is filmed. I also think a lot more could have been done with the characters throughout (particularly Porter and his family), but everything was instead more focused on ensuring the action impressed. Still, it was an entertaining (if frustratingly brief) series that worked because of four things: Richard Armitage makes for a good hero, the location shooting/choreography was excellent, the action was handled well, and the ebullient plots were an engaging mix of heightened realism and manly fantasy.

19 MAY 2010: SKY1/HD, 9PM