The Tourist: Seasons 1 & 2

7

This was definitely a lull decision. Honestly, I knew nothing about The Tourist and had read nothing about it before diving into this two-season streamer. Though I’d seen star, Jamie Dornan, in a flawed, but interesting film, Synchronic, and have always had a soft spot in my heart for his co-star here, Danielle Macdonald, after first seeing her way back in 2017’s hip-hop fairytale, Patti Cake$. The narrative looked to have one of those darkly comedic tones, involve a mystery and take place in Australia, where people are just naturally funny for some reason. Or maybe that’s New Zealand? Point is, I had some immediate connection to the two leads, thought the thing might have some humor and just kind of liked the fun vibe the trailer was laying down. It looked goofy and twisty in the way a good background show can be. Plus, Dornan has a really nice beard, so there’s that. Oh, and his character has amnesia, so I was curious to see if they could take the biggest trope ever and do something different with it. Turns out, not so much.

The series itself seems to have had a bit of a weird emergence. Well, at least its second season. It sounds like this was intended as a limited series, a co-production between the UK’s BBC One, Australia’s Stan and US’ HBO Max. My presumption is that after the first season, the show did well enough outside the US that the BBC and Stan looked at each other and were like, “You want another go at it?” And HBO was like, “We’re not in the ‘mid’ business and, plus, we’re trying to figure out what the hell is going on with HBO Max, Max, HBO Go and all that shit. Pass.” And, so, from what I understand Netflix picked up the distribution in the US for the second season and then took the whole series over for streaming purposes in the US. Or something. Point being, there should have been something to the fact HBO didn’t put their faith into a second season — and, frankly, neither should we.

Did I mention the catalyst to this whole thing is amnesia — I can’t recall? Amnesia. And maybe it’s because I just watched an amnesia movie that had many of the same mechanisms and beats, The Actor, but the whole generating mystery due to memory loss is just too convenient and silly when it comes down to it. Was I bad person? Was I a good person who was just put in a bad position? And on and on. In this case we have an unnamed man (Dornan) who is run off the road and crashes in the middle of nowhere Australia by a crazy semi-truck a la Spielberg’s Duel. He ends up in this rural hospital with no memory of who he is and why someone may have wanted to kill him. Lucky for him, Macdonald’s very eager Probationary Constable Helen Chambers [aka green local cop] character shows up to try to coax his memories out of him. But, before she can get answers, he leaves the hospital after finding a mysterious note in his pocket telling him that he is supposed to meet someone at a diner the next day in a tiny one-horse town. No matter the fact that whomever slipped the note into his pocket (which we find out later) would have no clue when he’d come out of his state of unconsciousness or have the wherewithal after suffering a major head injury — along with some lower-leg injury — to make his way to this diner. One of many, many just-go-with-it moments in this series that just considers narrative and logic leaps to be mere inconveniences that can be ignored.

He shows up to said diner and meets up with supposed waitress, Luci (Shalom Brune-Franklin). The diner explodes and suddenly the two of them are tied together trying to untangle the mystery of who he is and, once again, why someone wants him dead. But what would a good amnesia plot be if the people interacting with the amnesiac weren’t taking advantage of the fact he can’t remember anything? And Luci is certainly one of those people. Her being at the diner wasn’t a coincidence. In fact, she already knows this dude and claims his name to be Elliot Stanley. Whew, now we can actually call him something! The thing is, is Luci really named Luci? Of course not! It’s all a game of who can lie best to the guy with no memory. But, hey, Luci looks really good, so like all femme fatales before her, why wouldn’t you just go with it? Anyway, the giant guy from Severance, Ólafur Darri Ólafsson, comes to kill them a couple times and then some evil Greek drug cartel leader who regularly imbibes LSD that he drops in his water bottle (Alex Dimitriades) also acts all evil and murderous over a sentimental bag of cash? Chekhov’s water bottle, if you know what I’m sayin’. There’s also a desperate cop (Damon Herriman) trailing them who, for no known narrative reason, has a colostomy bag that he’s always emptying. Just to add some quirk to an already quirky show. Anyhow, everyone ends up dead except “Elliot” and Helen, the rookie cop. And there is inexplicably a Russian woman (Victoria Haralabidou) who comes along to tell Elliot that he’s a horrible person and that he used her as a drug mule and killed her friends and somehow and for absolutely no reason Elliot speaks Russian and now he’s suicidal and more confused than ever if he’s a bad person…

Smash cut to season two and Elliot and Helen are now… a loving couple on a train sleeper car for some reason. How do I put this gently? The, uh, sexual chemistry between Dornan and Mcdonald is non-existent. This scene and this pairing was giving me Domhnall Gleeson / Merritt Wever vibes from their absolute trainwreck of a show, Run. They were fine as investigation partners, but them as a couple? It really pushes reality and is a doomed choice from jump. They don’t look right together. They don’t vibe that way. And, frankly, Mcdonald’s acting isn’t strong enough to sell it. So, I was already bumping from minute one, even before we realize they’re now in Ireland, following yet another mysterious note that could lead to Elliot to find out more about his past. First, did we mention this was sold as a sort of comedy? I honestly recall maybe one or two kind of weak laughs, but there is nothing really funny about this series. There’s some quirkiness, to be sure, but it seems they employ Helen’s ex-fiancé, Ethan (Greg Larsen), to be that comic relief in season two after he plays what amounts to a belligerent and mentally abusive bully in season one. And, sure, seeing a large Aussie goofy drok, who has started a vlog about fighting masculine toxicity, can at times be entertaining, but his character is literally just a bolt-on accessory to lighten what is otherwise a violent and relatively dark season about a Hatfield–McCoy Feud set in a dreary rural Irish town. Like season one, the surroundings are pretty cool looking, but the plot bogs down in a morass of circular logic, continuity issues and confounding nonsense. There is a point where a key character falls down a flight of stairs, breaks his leg and then in the next scene is completely healed. This character, Fergal, played by 29-year-old Mark McKenna, who it turns out is one of the keys to unlock Elliot’s true identity, is supposed to be a teenager. Bro could maybe pull off mid-twenties, but it’s an absurd bit of casting if they’re trying to pass him off as a sad-boy kid. He played a teen in 2019’s Wayne, and even then it was a stretch. Glad his leg got better so quickly, though.

Honestly, the whole second season is a bit of a non-sequitur. It’s disjointed and feels like a bit of a lark on the part of the show’s creators. They watched a couple too many gangster movies and thought they’d try it out. It didn’t work. In fact, there’s a whole side adventure that involves the tiny ginger dude from Industry, Conor MacNeill, that is just complete blithering nonsense. He’s yet another cop who is apparently keeping the body of his dead wife — who died of natural causes — in his basement. And kidnaps Helen to keep her from telling anyone after she stumbles upon her body. But then lets her go and promises to turn himself in. For… not bringing his wife to a funeral home? For being a weirdo and keeping a mannequin (or sex doll?) with his wife’s clothes on it that is never really explained? For kidnapping and letting Helen go? Helen, who is no longer a cop and later claims to be writing a book, which is yet another continuity huh? WTF, honestly. That whole storyline — along with the romance between our two main characters — is just a complete and utter miss. Honestly, it’s incoherent. Especially after the two families murder the hell out of each other then are basically like “bygones, mate” at the end of the day. Ah, the Irish. Okay, I’ve spent way too much time on this. But, in one last moment of absolute stupidity, the show adds on a tag at the end of the last episode that alludes to the fact that Elliot (now Eugene) was actually a secret government agent the whole time! One that somehow was both in Ireland running his family’s crime syndicate, but also an international drug smuggler with some Greek dude, busy cutting open the abdomens of drug mules while yelling at them in Russian, but also murdering people in Australia. Yeah, none of it aligns. I would have been interested to see how they possibly got things to line up should they have been given a third season. It would have inevitably been a retconned mess.