Entertainment

BBC releases trailer for SAS drama starring Sex Education’s Connor Swindells

The six-part series is an adaptation of Ben Macintyre’s best-selling book offering a dramatised account of how the SAS was formed.
The six-part series is an adaptation of Ben Macintyre’s best-selling book offering a dramatised account of how the SAS was formed.

The BBC has released the first full-length trailer of Steven Knight’s upcoming drama SAS: Rogue Heroes.

Connor Swindells, Jack O’Connell, Alfie Allen and Dominic West can be seen in the new trailer which follows the creation of the world’s most renowned and ruthless Special Forces unit.

In the teaser, Sex Education star Swindells, who plays eccentric young officer David Stirling, says: “The war is in the balance. Who dares wins, and we will continue to dare.

Alfie Allen
Alfie Allen (BBC/PA)

“Welcome to the SAS.”

The 26-year-old is branded “the dreamer” in the trailer while Game Of Thrones actor Allen is given the name “the creator” and Skins star O’Connell is “the maverick”.

In the trailer, O’Connell appears as Paddy Mayne pointing a gun into the sky saying: “Let the games begin.”

Allen, who plays Jock Lewes in the series, is seen creating a bomb before planting it and setting it off.

The Wire star Dominic West plays Lieutenant Colonel Wrangel Clarke in the teaser, which depicts dramatic explosions and desert scenes which were shot in Morocco.

Jack O’Connell
Jack O’Connell (BBC/PA)

The trailer, set in Cairo in 1941, also stars Kingsman actress Sofia Boutella, Industry’s Amir El Masry and Carnival Row actor Theo Barklem-Biggs.

The six-part series is an adaptation of Ben Macintyre’s best-selling book offering a dramatised account of how the SAS was formed during the Second World War, having been granted access to secret SAS archives.

The show meets Swindells’ character Stirling in hospital after a training exercise went wrong.

He creates a radical plan that flies in the face of all accepted rules of modern warfare and fights for permission to recruit the toughest, boldest and brightest soldiers for a small undercover unit that will create mayhem behind enemy lines, following his assertion that traditional commando units do not work.

Creator Knight, who has won critical acclaim for Peaky Blinders, is also known for TV series Taboo and for being one of the co-creators of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?