Ultimate Force

Like the summary says.. WOW!

It's about a young guy, Jamie Dow who started out as a thief stealing cars from the age of 12 to 18. When sentenced, the judge was told that he'd just been accepted for the Royal Legistics Corps.

From there he worked hard and made it into the SAS. When asked why he did it he says that he 'wanted to see if I could make it'.

The show is basically about the SAS and the situations they find themselves in.

Not for the faint hearted but a very good show. Ross Kemp plays the ultimate Sergeant, the typical hard guy needed to be there. He's still very fair but doesn't let his feelings get in the way of things. Underneath he's a real pussycat, and looks after his command with his life.

The supporting cast is very well picked and compliments the show perfectly.

Last comment.. it's lovely to see an almost unknown actor Jamie Draven being given the chance to shine, and he takes every opportunity. One of the films you will have seen in is 'Billy Elliot' as Billy's brother.

I hope they do more than the 6 episodes as I would love to see more of Jamie and the guys.

I really enjoyed the first couple of seasons of the show, but season 3 and 4 wandered off into a fantasy land. The action seemed to be cartoon-like. It was also bizarre that season 4 seemed to focus on Americans as bumbling fools and/or untrustworthy enemies. Perhaps it was the zeitgeist of the day, or more likely a desperate attempt to salvage a very limited show that had run out of ideas. At any rate, it didn't save the show from cancellation. The other problem probably facing the show was that political correctness in the UK doesn't really allow for "bad guy profiling," so they needed to pick an enemy that isn't going to sue them or protest in the streets. So that leaves out the various Muslim nations, North Korea, Japan, the French (one supposes) and pretty much leaves the good old US of A.

The effort to salvage the show also led the producers to ever bigger stunts of daring do, ultimately requiring some pretty unconvincing Green Screen effects. Prior to season 4 the show was respectable because the actors did a pretty decent job of moving and coordinating tactically

I especially found humor in the episode where Red Team was on joint ops with the Green Berets. The Green Berets were portrayed as clueless and clumsy victims of friendly fire, who were badly in need of saving by the SAS. Being a UK show, I have no qualm with Red Team always being portrayed as the cool kids in every episode. On the other hand, if the show's creators actually felt confident then they wouldn't have to go that way, would they?

Make no mistake, the badged members of SAS are awesome, but there are other awesome special-operators out there as well. No sense making a spitting contest out of the question of superiority. All one big happy family.

Where to start. As a big fan of the SAS, I've watched countless documentaries, & after finding this immediately knew I had to watch. As a whole it's a decent show worth a watch at least once, however; series 1 & 2 were by far the superior as it lost its way in series 3 & only slightly brought it back for series 4. Series 1 & 2 showed a varied selection of different Operations with the SAS assault scenes filmed perfectly, probably due to the input of Chris Ryan, but series 3 relied heavily on typical action style shootouts with bullets flying everywhere as opposed to the normal SAS precision. Series 4 however went slightly back to the old format of the show, but on a whole not a bad show if you enjoy the SAS or any form of military drama.

We need a series like this. It does exactly what is says on the tin. Most of the situations are unbelievable but what do you expect from a show about the SAS? The production values are OK and the action is exciting without being silly (compared to made for TV American action movies). There are some stock characters but the script isn't laughable and the actors seem to care about what they are doing. As the new team member Jamie Draven portrays the right amount of innocence and brings a sense of duty to his role; his interactions with the rest of the cast are well thought out; you can see some chemistry between him and Alex Reid and I hope this is fleshed out in the next series. Although billed as such I never found Ross Kemp to be the star of the show and at times we aren't even supposed to like him; I am glad character is written this way and that his obvious mental scars dictate the person he is. This is in stark contrast to badly written imported shows where we are expected to believe that hardened battle veterans who are emotionally scarred and have shattered private lives are really nice guys who never do any thing wrong.

Some episodes are better than others; I actually thought the first episode was fairly weak but the second with the pressure group sniper story was excellent and allowed us to see flashes of how good the series could be.

I only got to see the first episode of the second series which took place on board a ship; the standout fight scene being that in the belly of the ship between Jamie Draven and the legionnaire, it was a tough no nonsense scrap and as exciting as the fight in the Bourne Identity.

Looking forward to the DVD.

Just finsished watching the final episode of the second series. Set in an overseas country two things bother me... 1 The lead charecter kills his officer without a moments hesitation -in cold blood- for reasons that are self explanitory..But the other characters don't seem in the slightest bit bothered or concerned how his death might have happened. 2. The helicopters that arrive to collect them after their mission - from a locally based operation - have a 'G' registration - this is a UK registration for those not in the know.

Apart from this it's great fun and full of action that is enjoyable to watch.

Look forward to the third series.