From the creator of Peaky Blinders, and based on Ben Macintyre’s best-selling book, Rogue Heroes is a dramatised account of how the world’s greatest Special Forces unit, the SAS, was formed under extraordinary circumstances in the darkest days of WWII.
The series follows a crew of renegade men who are a self-proclaimed band of oddities, gentlemen, and pirates who rail against the status quo of service to do things a little differently. The series is available weekly from Wednesday 5 April on SBS On Demand and premieres at 9:30pm on SBS.
Connor Swindells as David Stirling
Connor Swindells (, now streaming at SBS On Demand) plays David Stirling, who was the creator of the British Army’s Special Air Service (SAS). Born into one of the oldest and grandest aristocratic clans in Scotland, he was in training for an attempt to climb Mount Everest when World War II broke out, but he immediately enlisted in the Scots Guards as a sub-lieutenant. When his unit is involved in a series of postponements and cancellations, Stirling soon becomes disillusioned, bored and frustrated. And from this frustration comes the germ of the idea that will become the SAS.
Stirling regards rules as nuisances to be ignored, broken or otherwise overcome, and he won’t take no for an answer, either from those in authority or from those under his command. The spectre of his privileged upbringing and his exacting father loom large, giving him not only the confidence to take on military authorities and the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, but also instil in him a drive to win at all costs.
Connor Swindells as David Stirling. Source: Distributor
Jack O’Connell as Robert Blair ‘Paddy’ Mayne
Jack O’Connell, who you may recognise from films, Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Seberg () plays real-life, highly decorated war veteran Robert Blair Mayne, aka Paddy. Irascible, truculent, troubled and dangerously unpredictable, Paddy signed up with the Royal Ulster Rifles, and then the commandos. After the Battle of Litani River in June 1941, he was mentioned in dispatches for the impressive way he had commanded his troops and achieved his objectives. All of which makes Paddy Mayne sound like a model of academic, athletic and military virtue. Which he most emphatically is not.
Paddy strikes many, on first meeting, as a subdued, almost shy man, but he has a volatile and complex personality and he has no time for authority. He is a deeply literate man with a love of poetry (he once told Stirling the only thing he wanted to do was write). Among his many dislikes are posh people. He despises the way certain officers gain preference through social connections. So the relationship between Paddy and Stirling – an upper-class officer with unrivalled access to the old-boy network – is never going to be easy, but it is a relationship which changes modern warfare forever, and sees the two men challenge and push each other to lengths and achievements neither could have predicted.
Jack O’Connell as Paddy Mayne. Source: Distributor
Alfie Allen as John Steel ‘Jock’ Lewes
Alfie Allen (Game of Thrones) plays another co-founder and inventor of the SAS, Jock Lewes. Lewes is a paragon of military virtue, stern, a workaholic, slightly priggish, with little or no sense of humour; a man of rigid personal austerity. Jock is also athletic, rich, patriotic, and sports an immaculately tended Douglas Fairbanks Jr moustache.
Jock plays a vital role in establishing the unit’s ethos and high standards of training and discipline. Some of Lewes’ methods are dangerous and experimental. They include practising parachute jumps by leaping from the back of speeding lorries. However, he always leads by example. He has an inventive flair – when Stirling needs a new sort of bomb for their raids, one that can be set on a timer to both explode and ignite, Jock sets to work, applying very limited knowledge gained from playing with his brother’s chemistry set as a child and a great deal of determination. For several weeks he experiments in a makeshift open-air lab and improvises a new, combined charge out of plastic explosive, diesel and thermite which becomes known as the ‘Lewes bomb’.
Alfie Allen as Jock Lewes. Source: Distributor
Sofia Boutella as Eve
Sofia Boutella (Climax) plays the fictional character of Eve, the deputy head of French military intelligence in Cairo. As her boss is constantly drunk, Eve, for all intents and purposes, is the Head of French military intelligence in Cairo. She reports directly to the leader of the Free French Government in exile, General De Gaulle.
Newly arrived in the city, but an experienced operative who has undoubtedly seen more action than some of our men, Eve has a knack of hearing about anything and everything, and has a passionate desire to make a difference. She shares Stirling’s frustrations and impatience with how those in authority are running the war, and, like Stirling, intends to do something about it.
Eve sees the potential of working with Colonel Dudley Wrangel Clarke (played by Dominic West), who is responsible for British strategic deception in the Middle East, and when she learns that Clarke has invented an entire ghost unit of soldiers who are soon to become flesh in the form of Stirling’s rogue warriors, she reveals she has her own idea for an operation. Eve thinks Clarke might be able to help, and if Clarke won’t bite, she’ll go directly to Stirling.
Stream free On Demand
Rogue Heroes
series • drama
MA15+
series • drama
MA15+
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