The Tourist

I found that The Tourist is even more entertaining than people were saying it was. The Tourists follows an unnamed man (Jaime Dornan) who loses his memory after a car accident. We literally know nothing about him or the story. He wakes up in a hospital with no memory of who he was or what he did. All he has is a note to go to a diner at a specific time but as soon as he leaves the hospital there are people trying to kill him. From there he needs to find out who he is and what he did for people to want to kill him before it's too late. Jaime Dornan looks like he's on the verge of becoming a pretty big star. There are only two seasons at only six episodes apiece so it's an easy binge.

The Australian Outback is another world..lonely, desolate and mind-numbing.

So when a sophisticated Irishman wakes up with no memory of who he is or his past, the endless expanse ironically imprisons him together with the locals who are either naive and innocent or who know more about his past.

Even the secondary characters highlight what living and working in such remote isolation can do to the human psyche..it's hard not to go crazy from nothing to do and nothing to see.

The landscape itself is a key character...passive and active at the same time.

But it has all the ingredients of an Australian mystery..dark, raw, and the right dose of dry humour.

Series 1 is absolutely brilliant and expect the unexpected. Really well thought of and tight plot. Series 2 is the opposite and a great disappointment. The annoying character from series 1 is 100x more annoying and the main ones seems to have lost their true identity (pun intended) and their wit. They do things they would never have done in series 1 and it gets frustrating at some point. Helen is definitely not the same character as in the first series, she's annoying and disregards the Irish community and behaves as if she is still in outback Australia and all places are her playground and going rogue on her own.

Great mini series. Jamie Dornan is a great actor. I first saw him in The Fall, his brooding presence and hints of psychopathy in this gave me nightmares for a while. He has the ability to convey what lies beneath his exterior just with a look. The fifty shades series sadly did not allow him to show his full potential and was a dire set of films based on a dire set of books.

The Tourist however shows a great return to form from a man that has depth, dark humor and a great screen presence. Initially The Tourist appears to be the story of an unfortunate man embroiled in something he cannot remember and he doesn't understand the events unravelling around him. However as the plot progresses the initially likeable main character has you questioning his veracity.

Touches of dark humour are sprinkled through the plot with some truly great cameos make some of the characters appear flawed and thoroughly unpleasant (Ethan).

Mr Dornan however allows his character to evolve and has you questioning his story to the end.

Loved this, nice to see something a bit different that kept me guessing. More please Jamie!

A man (Jamie Dornan) is run off the road by a tanker truck in the Australian outback. He wakes up in the hospital with full blown amnesia. He doesn't even know his name. New cop Helen Chambers (Danielle Macdonald) doggedly investigates.

Jamie Dornan may be the big name of this series, but it's Danielle Macdonald that I find more compelling. She has a great sweetness to her acting. She's basically the cop in Fargo except not pregnant. This show does try to do some comedy mostly through characters like Ethan. It is not my favorite aspect of the show. This lasted two seasons with specific stories for each.