SAS Rogue Heroes, BBC 1, Sunday and BBC iPlayer
Who doesn’t love a man who breaks the rules for the greater good?
It’s the foundation of much television drama.
In this case it’s a soldier who wants to get things done, is irreverent, uncompromising and dismisses petty bureaucracy when he all he wants to do is his duty - to kill as many of the enemy as possible.
This, it seems, is the founding myth of the SAS as constituted in the north African desert in 1941.
The British were struggling against Rommel, and Churchill was demanding a success, any success, after the disasters of the early part of the war.
First World War veteran Auchinleck was in charge in Cairo and things were moving way too slowly for the London politicians.
Up steps our own Blair 'Paddy' Mayne, David Stirling and Jock Lewes to form the new specialist unit, once they sober up a bit that is.
There’s also the problem that Mayne is marooned in jail after assaulting his own commanding officer.
This is the second time the Co Down man has had jail problems after earlier fighting his way out of an impromptu hanging by angered MPs.
Mayne is convinced to join the Special Air Service despite his objection to it sounding like “a branch of the f*****g Post Office.
One section of the British army is marooned in Tobruk, in what is now Libya, and our heroes are frustrated at the delay in the top brass making a plan to relieve them.
Stirling convinces Auchinleck, whom he knew through his father, a legendary officer, to give the new unit 60 men and a free hand.
They are to parachute into the desert behind the German and Italian forces and attack their supply lines and stationary aircraft.
Stirling is partially paralysed after a fall in training but refuses to back off.
Much of this probably happened, but we shouldn’t fully rely on this new BBC drama as it only promises that the depicted events are “mostly true.”
Mayne, for instance, is written as a brutish, rough man who was looked down on by the aristocracy of his native Newtownards and despised the toff officer class of the British army.
While Mayne is a controversial figure who resisted authority, the working class description doesn't fit.
He was born to a landed family and attended grammar school where he excelled at rugby to such an extent that he played for the British and Irish Lions. He went to Queen’s University and qualified as a solicitor.
The series also overstates, for its own self-importance, the significance of north Africa in the war.
In episode one we’re told that “if Africa is lost the war is lost.”
Hitler’s vague plan, at one point, seems to have been that Rommel’s small force would take Cairo, control Suez and then push on up through the Middle East to rendezvous with the Barbarossa forces at the Caucasus oil fields.
He never really supported Rommel though, got diverted into an attack on Crete and the north African battle was viewed as a diversion.
Excesses and exaggerations aside, SAS Rogue Heroes is nonetheless great fun.
From the stencilled captions to the later era rock music soundtrack, it’s doesn’t take itself too seriously.
For instance, the choice of AC/DC’s ‘Highway to Hell’ as the SAS convoy heads into battle along a desert road is appropriate and hilarious at the same time.
This is meant to be entertaining Sunday night TV with a heavy dose of machismo.
We’re two episodes in on television but the full series of six-episodes is available on the iPlayer.
I’ll be watching the lot.
