Strike Back S02E01

Cinemax — the network and the punch line — has always had a businesslike approach to original programming. Sex-businesslike, that is, writes Mike Hale in the New York Times. “The Best Sex Ever,” “Sex Games Cancun,” “Zane’s Sex Chronicles”: its late-night offerings have made it the soft-core cathouse of premium cable. Now Cinemax has joined the prime-time drama game played so successfully by its parent, HBO, as well as other pay-cable networks like Showtime and Starz. In a bid to expand its young-male audience, it’s taken what it knows best (which would be sex) and added a traditional complement, violence.

“Strike Back” is a British variation on “24” that offers reasonably competent action scenes, depressingly casual depictions of torture and death, and a comic-book conspiracy story line while also being an efficient nudity delivery system. It’s the kind of show in which an agent doesn’t realize there are terrorists in the hotel lobby because he’s upstairs having it off with the waitress he met 10 minutes ago. We’re in B-movie international-thriller territory, where people say things like “You still don’t get it, do you?” and “We lost a good man that night,” and where a joltingly bloody shootout in Pakistan is followed by a long scene of comic relief in a Malaysian brothel. (The first four episodes were written by Frank Spotnitz of “X-Files” fame, the primary American contributor to this Cinemax-British Sky Broadcasting collaboration.)


“Strike Back” won’t make anyone forget “24” or “MI-5” or even “The Unit,” but it has its pleasures for the aficionado of guns and flesh in exotic locales. If you’re tired of getting your pay-cable nudity fix in Roman or Arthurian or Westerian garb, you could do worse. There’s something satisfying in the combination of crisp British detachment and Cinemax lasciviousness.

The show is about the adventures of a fictional counterterrorism unit called Section 20: sweaty operatives in the field directed from one of those cool-blue, all-seeing fantasy war rooms half a world away in London. It centers on the budding bromance between the two main action heroes, an all-business Brit (Philip Winchester of NBC’s “Crusoe”) and, with the American market in mind, a wisecracking, seemingly mercenary but eventually idealistic Yank (Sullivan Stapleton, the crazed brother in the Australian film “Animal Kingdom”).

The actors give these gun-toting clichés a little personality and a credible rapport, and South Africa and Hungary stand in prettily for various international hot spots. Story arcs — terrorists in Delhi, terrorists in Cape Town — stretch over several episodes, tied into a continuing paranoid-conspiracy mystery involving whether there were really weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The action moves quickly enough that the constant credibility gaps are minor annoyances; when the Indian army officer and the Pakistani intelligence agent agree to work together, it seems perfectly natural.

“Strike Back” is the first of a set of new action series for Cinemax; the next, based on the “Transporter” movies, is currently filming. Starz’s movie-centric sister channel, Encore, has also ventured into original programming with the recent “Moby Dick” mini-series, starring William Hurt. That leaves just Showtime’s secondary network, the Movie Channel. Where is its homegrown drama? Maybe something that, like “Strike Back,” embraces its network’s historical values. “Joe Bob’s Walking Dead” has a nice ring to it.

Television Series: Strike Back (S02E01- Project Dawn 1)
Release Date: August 2011
Actress: Alexandra Moen, Jennifer Tanarez & Karen David
Video Clip Credit: El amigo


















Rapid
Mega