SAS Rogue Heroes S2 (BBC)
2025 was ushered in with a raft of new TV shows, and there’s no doubt that the men of the UK were most looking forward to the second instalment of SAS Rogue Heroes, whose first series aired in 2022 to popular and critical acclaim.
Season 2 is definitely good. In a time of retracting TV show budgets and risk aversion from channels, it really does feel like proper prestige television with no expense spared on locations, stunts and SFX. It’s so gory and explosive that it feels more like a high budget Netflix show than a British creation on the BBC – perhaps a testament to the power and sway that Steven Knight holds in the industry (Maria, a feature film written by him, starring Angelina Jolie, was released in the UK in the same week).
Rogue Heroes S2 has an Inglorious Basterds feel to it. It follows a band of outlaws whose insanity has been harnessed for the good of the Allied war effort. Sardonic titles pop up underscored by electric guitars to introduce us to certain characters and moments, like they do for characters like Hugo Stiglitz in Tarantino’s movie. Jock McDiarmid (Mark Rowley) is made in the swashbuckling, fearless mode of Eli Roth’s Donny Donowitz. References to Inglorious Basterds is another thing that makes this show feel blockbuster rather than small scale.
The themes that Steven Knight is preoccupied with as a writer run heavily through this series. Peaky Blinders is concerned with toxic, unhinged men who will make war if it doesn’t find them, and Rogue Heroes marches along on this same well-trodden ground.
Jack O’Connell’s Paddy Mayne reminds you of Tommy Shelby: an ultimately broken man whose mental detachment make him an efficient killer and fearless man of action. He’s got a screw loose, but it’s working for him.
War induced PTSD ran through Peaky Blinders and it becomes a major theme in the second half of this series of Rogue Heroes, explored through the character of Reg Seekings (Theo Barklem-Biggs). There are some genuinely harrowing moments in series 2, namely watching a young Italian boy being blown up and be disembowelled.
This second series of Rogue Heroes is in part a great watch because it makes use of so many fascinating war tropes such as PTSD and insanity dressed up as bravery. This could also be levelled as a criticism against the series which didn’t really give you any fresh takes on any of these ideas. The PTSD storyline, in particular, felt like a collection of moments and scenes we had seen before. There was no new angle.
But things we’ve seen before isn’t always a bad thing and the show is genuinely so fun, so energetic and so enjoyable it’s easy to forgive it’s use of film and TV war tropes. SAS Rogue Heroes is a programme that reminds you of a time when TV was expensive, daring and bonkers. A time when TV was really good.
